i 







■mmim 



M 



I 







•^^^ . SIS \ <^ .%■ 





THE 



CHEISTIAN LIFE 



SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL. 



■BY 



PETER BAYNE, M. A. 



Now T\-e look upon Christianity cot as a power which has sprung up out of the hidden depths of man's nature, but as ouo 
which descended from above, when heaven oj)eaed itself anew to man's long alienated raee ; a power which, as both in its 
origin and its essence it is eialted above all that human nature can create out of its own resources, waa designed to impart to 
(Jiat nature a new life, and to change it in its inmost principles. — Neandeb. 

Hold thou the good : define it well : 
For fear divine Philosophy 
Should push beyond her mark, and be 
I to the lords of hell. — Tekxyson. 



BOSTON: 

GOTTLD AND LINCOLN, 

59WASHINGTONSTREET. 

NEW YORK : SHELDON, LAMPORT & BLAKEMAN. 

1855. 



t)V^5° 



^ 



-aB 



y's 



5? 



"J at 



H***^ ii>«»ki^>4^ livM-^ 



PREFACE. 



In the opening paragraphs of his powerful essay on 
Jonathan Edwards, Professor M'Dongall remarks on 
the too extensive diffusion of the idea that evangelical 
religion, in its strict, personal form, comports ill with 
solidity and compass of intellect. In a course of some- 
what desultory reading, I was forcibly struck with the 
prevalence of this idea in- certain departments of our 
literature ; and it occurred to me that a statement of the 
Christian view of the individual character, together 
with a fair representation of the practical embodiment 
and working of that character in our age, might not be 
unattended with good. It was thus that the composi- 
tion of the following chapters had origin. With the 
first idea certain others became gradually allied, and 
especially it seemed to me important that the position 
and worth of Christianity as a social and reforming 
agency should be, at least, in outline, defined. The 
twofold statement and delineation which I here attempt 
was the final result. 

The first and third divisions of the general subject 
may seem not to bear a due proportion to the second. 
The disproportion is only apparent : if I may be per- 
mitted to speak somewhat pedantically, the relation be- 
tween the three parts is that of stem, foliage, and fruit. 



iv PREFACE. 

The second part is biographic throughout : and in 
each of the Books into which it is divided, the working 
of the individual Christian life is intended to be repre- 
sented. In the first of these, as I would have it spe- 
cially noted, this hfe is manifested in the case of per- 
sons not extremely remarkable in an intellectual point 
of view, and who received their belief in the Christian 
Revelation in the natural way in which an accepted 
form of religion is transmitted from generation to gen- 
eration, not through argument and unaffected by intel- 
lectual doubt : in the second, it is exhibited in the 
case of minds which will be allowed to belong to a 
high order, and in which the Christian faith became 
finally the pillar of character, only after having been 
more or less rocked in the wind of doubt. The first 
may meet the floating notion that Christianity is pow- 
erless with the popular mind : the second, that it has 
lost its grasp on thinkers. 

In the First Book of the Second Part, I treat also, 
though not, as I have said, exclusively, of the mani- 
festation of Christianity in social life. In order to 
unite this endeavor with the general biographic plan of 
the work, it was necessary that the men selected should 
be more or less representative of public movements or 
characteristics. They are so : yet I have not been able 
to attain here a symmetry to yield me satisfaction. I 
must beg the reader, however, to remark, that I refer 
only incidentally to what is strictly the national life — 
that which one nation has as distinguished from an- 
other — and that my object is the general structure of 



PREFACE. V 

tlie internal social economy. A man in private life 
may well enough represent or introduce a phase of this. 

It was my idea and endeavor to represent the whole 
life of each individual of whom I spoke. I think that 
Mr. Carlyle has demonstrated, that a biography can be 
given in the compass of a review article : his essay on 
Burns I consider, in the full signification of the term, 
one of the most perfect biographies I ever looked into : 
and the highest success at which I aimed, in a literary 
point of view, was the introduction into Christian biog- 
raphy of certain of the methods of him whom I believe 
to be the greatest biographic writer that ever lived. 
My failure has been only not so complete as to hide 
itself from my own eyes. 

My relation to Mr. Carlyle is twofold. The influence 
exerted by him upon my style and modes of thought is 
as powerful as my mind was capable of receiving : 
yet my dissent from his opinions is thorough and total. 
I believe that, without a grand rectification, his views 
must be pernicious in their every influence ; when 
Christianity gives them this rectification, I think 
they convey important lessons to Christian men and 
Christian churches. Whether the streams that flow 
from that fountain are to spread bliss or bale, depends 
upon whether there can be put into it a branch from 
the Christian vine : and this, since no better has at- 
tempted it, I endeavor to do. 

Let it not be thought, however, that the following 
pages contain nothing but argument. Argument, in- 
deed, does not very much abound. I endeavor to let 



VI PKEFACE. 

facts speak In delineating the Christian life, more- 
over, one can never even approach truthfulness, if he 
regards only one aspect of character : Christianity, by 
hypothesis, makes all things new. 

The book is popular in the sense that I desired its 
style to be such as would please all readers : but I 
must beg to state that, in the first part, I endeavor to 
lay the foundation on the deepest and most stable ground. 

I have throughout abstained from quotation of book 
and page. The facts I state in connection with each 
man of whom I treat, are what might have been em- 
braced in a pretty long re^dew article. I state my obli- 
gations to the authors of the several biographic works 
I have consulted : and it will be no unimportant result, 
if my essay should lead to a wider and more practical 
use of the valuable and varied materials afforded by our 
now rich literature of Christian biography ; from such 
a reservoir, streams might be led off to water many a 
particular field, and cause many a particular crop to grow. 

In my first chapter, and in the first of the Second 
Part, I speak occasionally with a decision and succinct- 
ness which may seem somewhat assuming. I must ex- 
cuse myself by saying, that I have almost entirely given 
results, and that I did not rashly satisfy myself of their 
soundness. I may mention that, in defining the nature 
of happiness, I do not mean to assert that the theory 
of Sir William Hamilton is identical with that of But- 
ler, but only that they can be shown to harmonize. 



CONTENTS 

AND 

PLAN OF THE WORK 



PAET I.-STATEMEIfT. 

CHAPTER I. p^eK 

The Individual Life, 11 

CHAPTER II. 
The Social Life, 54 



PART II.-EXPOSITIOl^ AID ILLUSTRATION. 
BOOK ONE. 

CHRISTIANITY THE BASIS OF SOCIAL LIFE. • 

CHAPTER I. 
First Principles, 63 

CHAPTER II. 

Howard; and the Rise of Philanthropy, .... 96 

CHAPTER III. 

■WiLBERFORCE ; AND THE DEVELOPMENT OP PHILANTHRDPT, . 158 

CHAPTER IV. 

BUDGETT; THE CHRISTIAN FREEMAN, 205 



VUl CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Social Problem of the Age; akd one or two Hints 
TOWARD ITS Solution, 246 

BOOK TWO. 

CHEISTIANirr THE BASIS OF IXDIYIDUAL CHAEACTER. 

CHAPTER I. 

Introdijctort : A Few TVords on Modern Doubt, . . 291 

CHAPTER II. 
John Foster, 303 

CHAPTER III. 
Thomas Arnold, 36*7 

CHAPTER IV. 
Thomas Chalmers, 403 



PART III.-OUTLOOK. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Positive Philosopht, 483 

CHAPTER II. 
Pantheistic SpminjALiSM, 503 

CHAPTER III. 
General Conclusion, 515 



PART OI(E. 



STATEMENT 



CHAPTER I. 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE, 



In perusing The Tale of Goethe, a piece which is wonderful 
even among the works of that supreme literary artist, and 
which his worthy exponent and interpreter, Mr. Carlyle, has 
deemed, no doubt with perfect correctness, a picture, in the 
colors indeed of fantasy and dream, yet, to the seeing eye, no- 
wise indefinite, of the whole future, attention can. scarce fail to 
be arrested by the destiny there appointed for the Christian 
religion. In the Temple of the Future, the little hut of the 
fisherman, to which former and darker generations had looked 
for aid in every great emergency of existence, still found a 
place. The light of reason entering in breathed through it a 
new life and an immortal beauty. " By virtue of the Lamp 
locked up in it, the hut had been converted from the inside to 
the outside into solid silver. Ere long, too, its form changed ; 
for the noble metal shook aside the accidental shape of planks, 
posts, and beams, and stretched itself out into a noble case of 
beaten ornamented workmanship. Thus a fair little temple 
stood erected in the middle of the large one ; or, if you will, 
an altar worthy of the temple." The whole passage, of which 
this forms a part, is perhaps the finest illustration to be found 
of a certain wide-spread and multiform intellectual phenome- 



12 THE I ND I Y ID UAL LIFE. 

non of our time. In the higher walks of modern literature, 
an attitude is not unfrequently assumed toward Christianity 
which, in these ages at least, is new. It is concluded by the 
serene worshiper of reason or of man, that the Christian re- 
ligion may now be treated with that polite and complimentary 
tolerance with which a generous victor treats the distinguished 
prisoner whose sword he has huug on the side of his tent. 
We are told that Christianity is the highest thing man has 
" done," that it is the purest of earthly religions, that it has 
given voice to the deepest emotions in the human breast. 
Language, which reaches the gorgeousness, and force, and 
sweetness of poetry, has been woven into wreaths to crown 
it ; intellect, which, in the width of its domain and the great- 
ness of its might, suggests comparison with the centrcil power 
of imperial Eome, has shrined it in a temple, or offered it a 
vassal throne. And how are Christians bound to receive the 
haughty condescension of all this praise ? They are not left 
without an example by which to shape their conduct; their 
fathers taught them how to act in still more trying circum- 
stances. We have not forgot the ancient offers, tacit or ex- 
press, which were made to the religion of Jesus, and the 
wrath which awoke on their rejection. It might have obtained 
a seat on Olympus, a niche in the Pantheon of the ancient 
world ; it might have sheltered itself under the wide wings, 
dropping gold and manna, of the Eoman eagles. That the 
Crucified of Jude^ should be deemed mightier than the Jupiter 
of the Capitol, that the words of a few fishermen were to be 
esteemed more worthily than the ancient voice of the Sybil, 
and the mystic whisperings of a thousand sacred groves ; this 
astonished and incensed the Pagan world, this cut to the heart 
the pride of Rome. But the declaration of the smitten Gali- 
leans was explicit and unchanging: the Gospel of Jesus is 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 13 

every thing or nothing ; if true at all, every god and oracle 
must absolutely vanish before it. Our answer now can be no 
other than that given of old. Christianity either lives a divine 
life or dies ; until the concession is made that it is divine, in 
no qualified sense but to the express intent that it came down 
from Heaven, no approximation is made to what it demands. 
It will not enter that temple, arrayed, as it is, in the still ar- 
tisic beauty of Greece, which Goethe has reared for it; it 
either fades utterly, or that temple crumbles into the dust 
before it. 

There are but three hypotheses on the subject of the exist- 
ence of the Divine Being, and our relation to Him, which in 
our time deserve attention ; those of atheism, pantheism, and 
monotheism. Of the first of these, we do not now speak. 
The tone of unbelieving tolerance to which we have just re- 
ferred, is used chiefly by the disciples of that great school of 
pantheism which originated in Germany in the last century, 
and the ramifications of whose influence, more or less dis- 
guised and modified, we think we can detect very widely in our 
present literature. Its principal philosophic representative in 
Germany was Fichte ; its greatest embodiment in our country 
is in the works of Mr. Carlyle. The former of these may 
be called its originator, although it is our strong impression 
from what we know of the Kantian philosophy, and from the 
fact that Fichte was at first a disciple of Kant, that its original 
suggestion was found in the self-contained and self-sufiicient 
law, the categorical imperative, of that philosopher. We do 
not intend to enter upon the exposition of this pantheism. 
We consider it now in one point of view, in application to one 
problem ; and we mean to evolve the essential points of its so- 
lution of this problem, in contrast with that which we purpose 
briefly to sketch, the solution offered by Christianity. This 



14 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

problem is the formation of individual character, or rather the 
procuring for its formation a vital principle and solid basis. 

Long and careful study of the works of Fichte and Mr. 
Carlyle give us assured confidence in defining the essential 
starting-point and characteristic of Fichtean pantheism. It is 
. its assertion of the divinity of man. This is of course broad 
and explicit in the philosophy of Fichte. It is not so clear 
and definite in the works of Mr. Carlyle ; that great writer, 
although giving evidence of a powerful influence from Fichte, 
having experienced one still more powerful from Goethe, and 
having clothed his doctrines, not in the statuesque exactitude 
of philosophic terminology, but in the living language of men. 
It were, however, we think, difiicult to conceive a more per- 
fectly worked-out scheme of pantheism, in application to 
practical life, than that with which Mr. Carlyle has furnished 
us, and its essential principle ever is, the glory, the worship, 
the divinity of man. In our general literature, the principle 
we have enunciated undergoes modification, and for the most 
part, is by no means expressed as pantheism. We refer to 
that spirit of self-assertion, which lies so deep in what may 
\ be called the religion of literature ; to that wide-spread ten- 
dency to regard all reform of the individual man as being an 
evolution of some hidden nobleness, or an appeal to a perfect 
internal light or law, together with what may be called the 
worship of genius, the habit of nourishing all hope on the 
manifestation of " the divine," by gifted individuals. . We 
care not how this last remarkable characteristic of the time 
be defined ; to us its connection with pantheism, and more or 
less close dependence on the teaching of that of Germany, 
seem plain, but it is enough that we discern in it an influence 
definably antagonistic to the spirit of Christianity. 

The great point to be established against pantheism, and 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 15 

that from which all else follows, is the separate existence of a »^ 
Divine Being. We shall glance at the evidence of this in one 
of its principal departments — a department in which, we think, 
there is important work to be done — that of conscience. 

There has appeared, in a recent theological work, what we 
must be bold to call a singularly shallow and inaccurate criti- 
cism of Butler's doctrine of conscience. It has been spoken of 
as depending on "probable" evidence, and certain problems 
which it enables us to solve are alluded to as momentous or 
insuperable difficulties. The former of these assertions seems 
to us plainly to amount to an absolute abandonment of what 
Butler has done, to a reduction of it to a nonentity or a guess. 
As Mackintosh distinctly asserts, and as might be shown by 
overpowering evidence, his argument is based on the " xmassail- 
able" ground of consciousness — on that evidence which is the 
strongest we can obtain. Even the author of the Disserta- 
tion, however, has fallen into palpable error in treating of 
Butler ; and we must quote the following clauses from him, 
both to expose their inaccuracy and to indicate wherein con- 
sist that definiteness and that precision which the author to 
whom we first referred desiderates in Butler's masterly demon- 
stration : — " The most palpable defect of Butler's scheme is, 
that it affords no answer to the question, ' What is the dis- 
tinguishing quality common to all right actions V If it were 
answered, ' Their criterion is, that they are approved and com- 
manded by conscience,' the answerer would find that he was 
involved in a vicious circle; for conscience itself could be no 
otherwise defined than as the faculty which approves and com- 
mands right actions." 

Let us hear Butler : — " That your conscience approves of 
and attests to such a course of action, is itself alone an obliga- 
tion. Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way 



16 THE INDIVIDUAL LITE. 

we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority 
with it, that it is our natural guide," &c. 

This is quite sufficient. The supposed circle of Mackintosh 
is at once broken. To the question, What is the distinguish- 
ing quality common to all right actions 1 our answer is ex- 
plicit : The distinguishing quality is, that they are approved 
and commanded by conscience ; and, we add, the word " right" 
is that by which, in common speech, the common conscious- 
ness recognizes them to be thus approved and commanded. 
To the question, What, then, is conscience 1 we answer. Not a 
faculty which approves and commands right actions, as if they 
were right before, and were enforced for some outlying 
reason, but one which claims a power, whether original or 
derived, to set apart certain actions, and stamping them with 
its approval, constitute them right. 

In one sentence, we think, we can sum up what Butler has 
done in this all-important matter. His doctrine simply is, 
that, by the constitution of the human mind, the essential 
characteristic of conscience is its power supreme among the 
faculties to adjudicate on actions ; that the man who calmly 
interrogates consciousness, finds its declaration explicit, to the 
effect that refusal to obey the dictate of conscience is a denial 
of his nature. 

Does this imply that man, by obeying conscience, becomes 
infallible ? On no conceivable hypothesis. It is right, in a 
matter of inductive reasoning, to consult the logical faculty, 
and not the imagination ; a man who substitutes the fantastic 
Jimning of the latter, beautiful indeed in its place and time, 
for the substantial chain-work of the former, outrages his 
nature. But do we therefore say that the understanding errs 
not in the search for truth '? or do we consider the fact that it 
does often and grievously fail, an argument for discarding it 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 17 

from its office, and giving the place to some other faculty ? 
Precisely so is it with conscience. The theory of its legiti- 
mate supremacy asserts not that it does not err ; but it affirms 
that, in all circumstances, it is the faculty to decide on duty. 
We hold this precisely with the same degree of tenacity with 
which we hold the conviction that, though reason may err, in- 
tellectual skepticism is intellectual suicide: conscience may 
not be infallible, but rejection of its authority is moral skepti 
cism, that is, moral death. Butler shows the highest point on 
which man can stand, in order, with his unaided powers, to 
see God ; but can we for a moment allege, that the author of 
the Analogy did not perceive the fact that this is but climbing 
to the top of a ruined tower, and that, though from its head 
w^e can see farther than from the plain below, the only hope 
for man is, that, gazing thence, he may see the dawning of the 
Sun of Righteousness 1 

The above is, strictly speaking, all that Butler has done. 
The distinct and verbal testimony he bears to the fact that 
conscience naturally refers to God, is in itself of great value ; 
but it is of the nature of a testimony, not a proof; it has all 
the weight that the deliverance of the individual consciousness 
of one of the clearest and strongest thinkers that ever lived 
must be allowed to possess, but this is very far from equiva- 
lent to a demonstrative dictum of the universal consciousness. 
Morality he demonstrated : to godliness he bore witness. 

The numerous expressions of agreement with Butler in his 
belief that conscience naturally spoke from God, can not b 
considered, more than his own, as constituting any such proof 
of the point as he offers for the supremacy of the moral 
faculty. Dr. Chalmers, perhaps the ablest of the writers who 
have thus recorded their assent, does, to an important extent, 
suggest the mode and indicate the materials of this proof j his 



18 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

refeience to the phenomena of remorse and self-complacency 
is a very valuable hint ; and his assertion of the fact that con- 
science points to the being of God as "with the speed of 
lightning," shows at least what has to be proved ; but even he 
makes no stated attempt to connect the truth he asserts with 
the consciousness of the race, and thus vindicate for it a place 
in that fortress whose assailing is the assailing of the possi- 
bility of truth. Perhaps the greatest achievement now possi- 
ble in ethics is to connect indissolubly with the universal con- 
sciousness the fact that the moral faculty speaks by a delegated 
authority. 

We shall not pretend here to draw out the demonstration 
which we believe to be possible. We shall merely oifer two 
considerations, without fully unfolding either. We think that 
the second admits of being shown to be of itself conclusive. 

I. The human consciousness, as revealing itself in history, 
has borne witness to the fact that it is natural for man not to 
regard the voice of conscience as final. We here point to no 
particular system of belief ; we care not even though the name 
of the religion was pantheism. We point simply to that one 
fact, whose exhibition seems co-extensive with history, that 
the human race has not worshiped itself. There has ever 
been manifested an irresistible conviction that the phenomena 
of conscience were knit by a whole system of relations to 
somewhat beyond and external to the breast ; that their mean- 
ing and efficacy were thus essentially affected. Did remorse 
cause the soul to writhe in hidden anguish 1 The hecatomb 
was straightway piled, the altar smoked : some external 
power believed capable, in what way soever, of sending forth 
a gentle wind to calm and cool the troubled spirit, was ap- 
pealed to. Did a feeling of mild satisfaction breathe through 
the breast, in the consciousness of duty performed or noble- 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 19 

ness evinced 1 The present re-ward was not deemed exhaust- 
ive. Before the eye, resting afar, as on the still evening hori- 
zon of a troubled day, there beamed out softly the Elysian 
fields, with their tranquil rivers, on whose banks rested heroes, 
and their unfading flowers that breathed balm odors through 
the cloudless air. Every Pagan nation has had its mythology, 
and each mythology is essentially an attempt of the mind to 
shape out in visible form the several relations in which it 
believes itself to be joined with some external but invisible 
power. In one word, the conception of man as self-complete, 
as all in all to himself, as his own God, has been in all ages 
foreign to the mind of the race ; perhaps of no phenomenon 
could it be more confidently asserted that it is a universal 
habit of mankind, than of the tendency to associate internal 
monitions with some great external reality or realities. 

II. This seems to be a necessary and demonstrable case of 
the action of the great mental law by which a cause is de- 
manded for every effect. As if impressed by God with a 
necessity of bearing testimony to His existence, every thing 
within the realm of finitude, from Arcturus and the Pleiades 
to the tiny moss that clings to the ruined wall, presents itself 
to us with an irresistible power to compel reference to a 
cause. If we are to retain faith in mind, we must believe 
that, in the region of the finite, this urgent necessity has a 
significance. Now, if the voice of the moral faculty is heard 
by the human soul as final, it is the one phenomenon within 
the bounds of conception which claims exemption from this 
law ; it alone breaks the bonds of finitude. No such exemp- 
tion can be pleaded ; as surely as a monition of conscience is 
a phenomenon, so surely does it impel the human mind to 
seek its cause. The great historical fact we noted is thus at 
once confirmed and explained. It is seen that it was a resist- 



20 THEIKDIVIDUALLIFE. 

less necessity which in all ages urged the human mind to seek 
its Deity without. We do not hesitate to go further. We 
think it would admit of being shown that the law here acts in 
its most express form, and with clearest suggestion of intent. 
All nature bears the stamp of its Maker ; but conscience 
names His very name. 

The above proofs, w^e are well assured, admit of being elab 
orated into an irrefragable demonstration, that consciousnes: 
teaches us to refer the commands of the moral faculty to an 
external authority ; and if this is so, it will not be disputed 
that there is but One authority to which they can be thus 
referred. We conclude, then, that the doctrine of the dele- 
gated nature of conscience is grounded on evidence, of simi- 
lar nature and like conclusiveness with that of its supremacy 
among our faculties : godliness is natural to man in the 
same sense as morality. 

Pantheism is a theory of God, man, and the universe, 
which can not be denied to contain elements of great sublim- 
ity ] atheism can say nothing of the world, but that, for the 
living, it is a workshop, and for the dead a grave ; nothing of 
the soul of man, but that it is the action of organism, and 
that the possibility of its separate existence is a dream ; but 
pantheism, whether delusively or not, and at least in its pop- 
ular representations, admits a theory of the world v/hich is 
sublime, and a theory of man which is exalted. When 
clothed in the chastened beauty of the language of Fichte, or 
wrapped in the poetic gorgeousness of that of Carlyle, these 
can scarce fail to awake enthusiasm ; and it is when, with ex- 
press intention or not, such writers cast a passing glance of 
contempt on the apparently dead and rigid universe of one 
who refuses to say that the All is God, that an entrance is apt 
to be found for those general modes of thought which are of 



Til E IND I VID U A L LI FE. 21 

the nature of pantheism. It were well, therefore, to look 
fairly in the face the express or tacit assumption of the pan- 
theist; to contrast, with all impartiality and calmness, his 
universe and his God with those of the Christian. 

Ye make the great All a machine, say the pantheists, a dead 
piece of very superior mechanism ; the tree Igdrasil of the 
old Norsemen was better than that ; to look on the universe 
as godlike and god, how infinitely better is that ? Let us 
consider. One mighty tide of force filling immensity, its 
waves, galaxies and systems, its foam sparkling with worlds, 
one immeasurable ocean of life, swelling in endless billows 
through immensity at its own vast, vague will ; such is at once 
the universe and the God of pantheism. The pantheist is 
himself one little conscious drop in the boundless tide, in the 
all-embracing infinite. In the branching of the stars, this 
infinite rushes out ; in the little flower at your feet, it lives. 
In all the embodying of human thought — in the rearing of na- 
tions and politics, in the building of towered cities, in the 
warring and trading of men — it finds a dim garment ; in the 
beauties, and grandeurs, and terrors of all mythologies — the 
grave look of the Olympian King, the still and stainless 
beauty of the woodland Naiad, the bright glance of the son 
of Latona, the thunder-brows of Thor, the dawn smile of 
Balder — it is more clearly seen ; tRe beauty which is the soul 
of art — the majesty that lives from age to age in the statue 
of Phidias, the smile that gladdens the eyes of many genera- 
tions on the perfect lip and in the pure eye of a Madonna by 
Raphael — is its very self You may look at it, you may, by 
effort of thought, endeavor to evolve it within you ; but the 
drop holds no converse with the ocean, the great rolling sea 
hears not the little ripple on its shore ; you can hold no con- 
verse or communion with your God ; your highest bliss is to 



22 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

cease individually to be, to sink into unconscious, everlasting 
trance. What, now, do we behold, when we turn, with un- 
sandaled foot, to look upon the universe and the God of 
Christianity ? An immensity, to the bounds of which, urge 
them never so wildly, the steeds of thought shall never 
pierce, thronged with ordered myriads of worlds, all willed 
into existence and ever upheld by a Being, of whom tongue 
can not speak or mind conceive, but who lit the torch of rea- 
son, who hears the voice of man, and whose attributes are 
dimly mirrored in the human soul. Endeavor to embrace 
the universe in thy conception; let thought take to it the 
wings of imagination, and imagination open the oceanic eye 
of contemplation ; view this stupendous illimitable whole. 
Then conceive God infinitely above it ; filling it all with His 
light, as the sun fills with its light the dewdrop ; as distinct 
from it as the sun is from the dewdrop ; to whom the count- 
less worlds of immensity are as the primary particles of 
water composing the dewdrop are to the sun. Then add this 
thought: that He, around whose throne the morning stars 
for ever sing, to whom anthems of praise from all the star- 
choirs of immensity go toning on eternally from galaxy to 
galaxy, hears the evening hymn of praise in the Christian 
home, the lowly melody in the Christian heart, the sigh of the 
kneeling child ; and, when ""the little task of his morning so- 
journ on earth is over, will draw up the Christian, as the sun 
draws up the dewdrop, to rest on the bosom of infinite Love. 
Such is the universe, and such the God of the Christian, in 
what faint and feeble words we can image the conceptions. 
Is the universe of pantheism more sublime than this 1 

We must, however, pause. We have, in the preceding sen- 
tences, not unallowably conformed to those general ideas of 
God which must float in the general intellect. But in order 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 23 

to show what Christianity here affords us, we must endeavor 
to define, with briefness, but precision, the ultimate idea of 
God at which philosophy can arrive. We shall not enter into 
any proof of the fact, that the human mind can not conceive 
the infinite ; that the sphere of thought is limited by the rela- 
tive, the conditioned. We assume this point, or rather we 
accept regarding it, as what may now be considered final. Sir 
AYilliam Hamilton's demonstration. We shall agree with the 
declarations on this subject, which he cites as those of a 
" pious philosophy :" — " A God understood would be no God 
at all ;" " To think that God is, as we think Him to be, is 
blasphemy." The general intellect of the race has always 
sought for, and believed in, supernal power ; this grand charac- 
teristic may be affirmed of all nations and ages ; if some 
appearance of exception has been presented, it has been by no 
means of an extent or nature to invalidate the general evi- 
dence. This belief, however, has been either instinctive and 
imperfect or blind ; either accepted at the instinctive bidding 
of those laws which will not permit man to consider phenom- 
ena causeless, and finitude final, or the faint echoes received 
without question or examination, of an original revelation. 
The general idea formed in all ages of the Divine, has ad- 
mitted of being analyzed into two components ; a personality 
either human, or strictly analogous to that of man, and a sup- 
plement of human power, beauty, and wisdom, by more or 
less skillfiil borrowing from those examples of force, loveli- 
ness, or design, which are manifested in nature, and were 
recognised to transcend human attainment. But as civilization 
advanced, and thought began to appear, the popular conceptions 
of divinity were submitted to philosophic examination, and 
proved to be unsatisfactory. To avoid detailed explanation, 
we shall say, in general terms, that philosophy, after careful 



24 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

examination, arrived at the conclusion that the origin of the 
finite could not be found within the region of finitude. The 
theory that the sun was not altogether without a cause, but 
that it formed the chariot of an ever-youthful god, whose smile 
was the sunshine that yellowed the corn, whose anger was the 
drought that occasioned famine,<that the deep roll of the thunder 
amid the folds of the black cloud was not self originating, but 
was amply accounted for as the rattling of the wheels of the 
awful Jove ; that the beauty of sea-foam, and rainbow, and rose- 
bud, and vine-cluster, and bewitching eye and cheek, and lip, was 
no sport of accident, no uncaused fantastic play over the face 
of nature, but the cunning work of a goddess who embodied 
the beautiful, might hush any hulf-expressed questioning of the 
rude popular mind, but could nowise satisfy reason. Even 
the general intellect, when it at all engaged in reflection, found 
this first series of answers insufficient ; that sun-god, that Jove, 
that Venus, the whole magnificent company that sat in thrones 
over the unstained snow of Olympus — whence came they"? 
There arose theories to account for their origin ; if the keen 
piercing human mind would not rest contented with this fair 
vision, if the finite attribute of multiplicity pained and im- 
pelled it, an older mythology was seen, or fancied to emerge, 
venerable Saturn, and Hyperion the giant of the sun, and 
hoary Ocean, and the whole Titan brotherhood ; and, if even 
this satisfied not, all might be referred to the primal two. 
Heaven and Earth, or even they might be placed at the foot 
of an ultimate and immovable Fate. At this last stage, the 
reflections of the popular mind came nearly into coincidence 
with philosophy. This, as we said, passing beyond polythe- 
istic notions arrived at the original, unconditioned, inscrutable 
one. This was the critical moment. Was the fact that the 
Divine could not be comprehended and defined by the human 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 25 

mind to be taken as an evidence of its non-existence, or was a 
Divine, thus inscrutable, to be received 1 That philosophic 
intellect which we deem the noblest and most sublime, to 
which the belief in a God was a necessity, held by the second 
alternative, whether by accepting, with subtle yet sublime 
self-deception, the product of imagination for the affirmation 
of reason, or by devising some new faculty, whose voice was 
conclusive in the matter, and calling it faith ; thus, we may 
boldly assert did Plato in Greece, and Fichte in Germany ; 
that philosophic intellect which could consent to abandon 
belief in man's spiritual existence, and in an unseen govern- 
ment of the world, lapsed into atheism ; this was perhaps the 
result of the Aristotelian philosophy in ancient times, and has 
been the avowed goal of the . modern positive philosophy. 
And thus we are enabled to shut up forever the pantheistio 
theory of God and man, against which we now especially con- 
tend, in one dumb negation ; to use again the words of Sir 
William Hamilton, " the All" evolved by " the scheme of 
pantheistic omniscience," " at the first exorcism of a rigorous 
interrogation, relapses into nothing." We are not here re- 
quired to have recourse to inference ; in the work which 
embodies Fichte's theory of practical things, his Way to the 
Blessed Life, we find his ultimate expression for the Divine 
Being to be " the pure negation of all conceivability associated 
with infinite and eternal lovableness." We need scarce 
observe that this lovableness is a condition and conceiva- 
bility violating, as absolutely as would a thousand attributes 
and qualities, that character of the one being, upon which he 
so strenuously insists, that it is the absolute, immutable, 
unconditioned one. Of all that conception of the Divine, 
which, by his aid, and using his colors, we have endeavored to 
body forth, we may just say that, by the origital axiom of his 

2 



26 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 

own philosophy, it is annihilated ; proved to be either a mere 
play of imagination, or the common ideas and representations 
of God, highly colored and refined. 

We turn to Christianity. The Bible, by many and explicit 
declarations, affirms, that God can not, in essence, be known 
to man ; by no searching can Jehovah be found out unto 
perfection ; He is the I AM whom no eye hath seen or 
can see. But He is not altogether an unknown God ; when 
Paul professed, before the Athenian sages, his ability to reveal 
to them Him whom they had ignorantly worshiped, he made 
no vain boast. Omitting express allusion to the doctrine of 
the Trinity, we may say that, in a twofold manner, God is 
thus revealed, and we are enabled to approach unto Him : 
first, by a divine intimation that man is formed in the image 
of God ; and, second, by the incarnation of the Godhead in 
the man Christ Jesus. It is our present object to inquire 
what is thus obtained, not to adduce the evidence by which 
Christianity proves itself divinely empowered to afford it : 
we merely remark, in passing, that, since it came to supply 
what reason, by hypothesis, fails to achieve, to save man, on 
the one hand, from blank atheism, and, on the other, from 
blind faith or imaginative delusion, it was to be expected that 
its fundamental attestation would embrace somewhat out of 
the sphere of natural law and ordinary induction, in other 
words, be miraculous. By declaring, with a divine sanction, 
that man was created in the image of God, Christianity at 
once affords a satisfactory and dignifying explanation of what 
would otherwise have been little more than a pitiable delusion, 
man's universal tendency to conceive of his divinity or divin- 
ities, as in the human form ; while it enables us to avail our- 
selves of every natural manifestation in which pantheism 
arrays its imaginary God, to set it in its own position in the 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 27 

general system of things, as a means of revealing even the 
least of the ways of the Christian God, and to gather from it 
fresh argument to strengthen our faith, or to deepen our 
adoration. To elicit the whole and precise meaning of the 
passage relating to man's creation in the image of God, a 
passage which, though profound and mysterious, commends 
itseff irresistibly to the human reason and heart, would ex 
ceed our present scope; only let it be remembered tha 
Christianity altogether avoids those anthropomorphic errors 
into which every conception formed of God by the unaided 
human reason must lapse, by proclaiming the fact of the 
fall, and representing the Divine image in man, although not 
altogether erased, as yet, to use the words of Calvin, " con- 
fused, broken, and defiled." This brings us naturally to the 
second point we mentioned, which is, indeed, the great central 
point of Christianity, the revelation of the perfect image of 
God in Christ Jesus. "We still are unable to conceive the 
essential Deity : but, if we continue to contemplate the 
Saviour, we rise to ideas of the mode in which His attributes 
find manifestation unspeakably more exalted, we mark the out- 
goings of His wisdom, power, and love, with a clearness inex- 
pressibly greater than can be attained by any observation of the 
universe or study of man. The infidelity with which we are at 
present concerned, has expressed fervent admiration of Jesus ; 
and this fact must at least make it appear reasonable in the 
eyes of its followers, that Christians discern in Him a holi- 
ness and beauty transcending those of earth. The might of 
the ocean and the tempest, the strength of the everlasting 
hills, the silent beaming forth, as in ever-renewed miraculous 
"vision," of the splendor and opulence of summer, the il- 
lumination of immensity by worlds, may offer some faint idea 
of the going forth of the power of Omnipotence : but there is 



28 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

a still more impressive, and, as it were, present manifestation 
of supernatural power made to man, when the storm sinks 
quelled before the eye of Jesus, or the dead comes from the 
grave at his word. When the heart expands with a love that 
embraces the whole circle of sentient existence, or even, by 
the bounteous imagining of poetic sympathy, first breathes an 
ideal life into flower and tree, and then over them too sheds, 
with Wordsworth, the smile of glowing tenderness, we may 
remember that there still linger traces of the Divine image in 
man, and faintly imagine the streaming forth of that Love 
which brightens the eyes of the armies of heaven, and gives 
light and life to the universe ; but can any manifestation of 
human tenderness bring to us such a feeling of God's love, as 
one tear of Jesus shed over Jerusalem, or one revering look 
into his eye, when in the hours of mortal agony it overflowed 
in love and prayer for his murderers ] We can attach a true 
and noble meaning to the words of Fichte when he bids us 
watch the holy man, because in what he "does, lives, and 
loves," God is revealed to us; but we will affirm that any 
instance of human heroism is altogether faint and powerless in 
enabling us to form a conception of the holiness of God, when 
compared with the devotion to his Father's service of Him 
whose meat and drink it was to do the will of God, and who 
died on the cross to make an atonement for sin. And if, in 
addition to all this, Christianity told us of a Divine Spirit, 
whose mysterious but certain influence on the mind enabled it 
to discern a glory and a beauty in the Saviour incomparably 
more exalted than could otherwise be distinguished, how truly 
might we assert that it brought us into a closer nearness to 
the Divine, than the most ethereal dreaming of mystic trance, 
or the most gorgeous imagining of pantheistic poetry ! But 
not only thus is the God of the Christian a known God, in a 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 29 

sense in which the God of pantheism never can be ; Jesus is 
not only the second Adam, revealing that Divine image in the 
human form which was presented by Adam before his fall, but 
also a Mediator between God and man. Through the Divine 
Man the Christian can hold converse with the Spirit of the 
universe. 

And this brings us directly to the solution offered by 
Christianity of that problem of the individual life of wliich we 
have spoken, and which is expressly treated both by Fichte 
and Carlyle. 

Both these writers recognize it as seemly and right, if not 
in all cases necessary, that, at a certain stage of the personal 
history, the mind awaken and bestir itself, and struggle as in 
throes of birth or tumult of departure; that for a time it 
wrestle with doubt, or cower trembling under the wings of 
mystery, searching earth and heaven for answers to its ques- 
tions, and satisfaction for its wants ; that there be a turning, 
in baffled and indignant loathing, from the pleasures of sense, 
as all inadequate either to still or satisfy new and irrepressible 
longings after the good, the true, the beautiful, after God, free- 
dom, immortality. We suppose it is an assertion which will 
not be counted rash or daring, that our language contains no 
example of the delineation of mental confusion and dismay, to 
be compared with Mr. Carlyle's description of such a period in 
Sartor Resartus. In this time of distraction and unrest, calm 
thought and manly action are alike suspended ; the quiet of 
the soul is broken ; around it seem to hang curtains of thick 
cloud, streaked with fire, shutting it, in gloomy solitude, from 
heaven's light above, and the voices of human sympathy 
around. Fichte and Carlyle profess to tell us how the soul 
may emerge from this confusion and distress to noble and per- 
fect manhood ; how it may once more feel around it the fresh 



30 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

breath of the open sky, and over it the clear smile of heaven ; 
how the streams of thought may again flow on in melodious 
harmony, and the wheels of action obey their impulse ; how 
perfect content is to be regained with one's position in the 
system of things ; how all fear and torment are to give place 
to blessedness ; how love is again to suffuse the world, and 
over every cloud of mystery to be cast a bow of peace. 

Such a period Christianity likewise recognizes — the period 
preceding conversion. It is indeed by no means necessary 
that in every case there occur this tumultuous crisis of inter- 
nal life ; one of the above writers declares that the ultimate 
lesson of manhood may be taught by the mild ministries of 
domestic wisdom and love, even better than " in collision with 
the sharp adamant of Fate," and so the change which is 
wrought in the soul by vital Christianity may be silent and 
gradual as a cloudless dawn, unobserved by any human eye 
until the new light wraps the whole character, touching all its 
natural gifts with immortal beauty, and turning the cold dews 
of night into liquid radiance. Yet, in order to define clearly 
and discriminate boldly the stages in the change, we shall con- 
template it in such a case as these authors suppose. 

We shall conceive one, who has hitherto been a Christian 
but in name, suddenly pausing and beginning to give earnest 
heed to the spiritual concerns which he has deemed of trivial 
importance. We shall suppose him to be affected in a two- 
fold manner: by a sense of personal uneasiness, of what 
Fichte names " torment," of present self-accusation and pros- 
pective alarm ; and by doubt and dismay in consideration of 
the sad uncertainty of human sorrow, and the mysterious and 
appalling destiny which, as he learns from Christianity, awaits 
a portion of the human race. The first of these may be indi- 
cated by the general name, fear : the second is an inability to 



TUL INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 31 

assent to the fact of divine justice, an inability of which we 
fully recognize the possible honesty. The first will agitate 
most strongly minds not of a noble natural temper ; the sec- 
ond, we are well assured, is often found to rack with keenest 
agony men of generous and benignant dispositions. The sec- 
ond may even be absent altogether ; but we are disposed to 
think that the final attainment and rest in this case will be less 
lofty, and pure, and beautiful, than in the other. Let it be 
supposed, however, that the mind is in extreme tumult and 
anguish ; we proceed to show how it is that Christianity pro- 
fesses to restore tranquil happiness, and recall healthful ac- 
tivity. 

Perhaps in no case do the tremulous delicacy and subtle 
pride of the day come out more" strongly than in our modes of 
regarding all that relates to fear in religious matters ; and per- 
haps in no other case does the power of Christianity to lay its 
hand on the heart of the race, and its way of coming in contact 
with life and reality, contrast so boldly with the fine-spun, flat- 
tering, but evanescent theories of a haughty philosophy. The 
history of the world abundantly testifies that a religion alto 
gether dissociated from fear is emasculated and unavailing ; the 
state of Greece in its decline, of Rome under the Caesars, of 
the Italian republics of the fifteenth century, shows what is 
that guardianship exercised over the national virtues, by a re- 
ligion which has become a sentiment or a debate, which has 
laid aside its terrors, and passed into the school of the philoso- 
pher or the studio of the artist. We at once concede, that in 
the teaching of Christianity there is, and has always been, an 
element, and a prevailing element, of fear. It is a fact which 
admits of no disguise, and we must endeavor to account 
for it. 

The phenomenon we consider under the name of fear, as 



32 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

characteristic of that state of the individual mind we at pres- 
ent contemplate, has escaped the observation of neither of the 
authors of whom we have spoken. Fichte does not indeed, so 
far as we recollect, expressly mention fear ; he uses the general 
term, torment, and regards this as nature's monition to leave 
self and sensuality, and turn to the divine. Torment, with 
him, is the stirring of the divine principle within, and the ex 
pression of its unrest and embarrassment in the bonds of 
sense ; but whence it has arisen that this discipline is necessary 
for the human soul, why the throes of divine birth must ago- 
nize us, why the beginning is anguish, when joy, which is the 
companion of perfection, the guerdon of genius, is the progress 
and the end, we learn not from his philosophy. Fichte, when 
his terms are rightly interpreted, defines, with a certain cor- 
rectness, the office of fear ; of its origin, save perhaps some 
assertion of necessity, he offers, to our knowledge, no theory. 
The way in which Mr. Carlyle, in the ultimate attainment of 
rest by his wanderer, disposes of fear, is to us one of the most 
sadly interesting portions of his writings. Drawn by the force 
of intense human sympathy and fiery insight into a more in- 
timate knowledge of the actual feelings of the soul than the 
lofty philosophic enthusiasm of Fichte's speculation enabled 
him to attain, he seems to indicate the element of a regard to 
futurity as entering into the anguish which oppresses the 
awakening and aspiring soul. The wanderer attains true man- 
hood by finally triumphing over fear ; not only fear of any 
thing on earth, but fear " of Tophet too ;" by casting a defiant 
glance around this universe, and daring any existent power to 
make him afraid. We are aware of no voice reaching him 
from Heaven to whisper of pardon and invite to peace ; we 
see no hand stretched out to remove sin or impart purity ; by 
one tremendous effort of will he rids himself of terror, and 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 33 

declares that if hell must be dared, it must. Some time after 
this achievement, he discovers that nature is God, that he him- 
self is part of the Divinity ; we might say that, having shown 
himself brave, he had vindicated his right to his natural birth- 
right, and might boldly lay claim to his inherent divinity. 
Now, we shall distinctly admit that there is sublimity in this 
spectacle of a finite being defying the terrors of Tophet ; we 
attempt not to deny that there is a grandeur in the aspect of 
him, who, a few short years ago a weeping infant in his cradle, 
and in a few more fleeting years to be so still under his green 
hillock, thus, in the brief path between, hurls indignant scorn 
at the terrors of infinitude. But was it not such a sublimity 
which rested on the brow of Moloch, in the glare of hell's 
battlements 1 Such a sublimity, methinks, was in the eyes of 
Eblis, where pride waged eternal conflict with despair, as he 
sat on his globe of fire. " Let the world insult our feeble- 
ness ; there is no cowardice in capitulating with God." We 
do not affirm that Mr. Carlyle intends to put into the mouth 
of his hero a deliberate defiance of God ; but we have perfect 
confidence in alleging, that he represents the soul in the great 
crisis of individual life, as trusting solely to its own energies 
for deliverance, the terrors which encompass it as drawing off 
at the determined best of human will, not by Divine permission 
or commandment, the saviour of man, as himself. For the 
ultimate origin of the discipline of sorrow, we look likewise in 
vain in the works of Mr. Carlyle. 

When we turn to Christianity, it seems impossible to fail to 
note an access of clearness, and what we might style an agree- 
Inent with the general symmetry of nature. We do not now 
consider the kindred subject of the office assigned to hope in 
the Christian scheme ; we speak now of fear. But it is im 

portant that the precise place of each be fixed. If not directly 
•2 * 



34 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

asserted of Christianity, it is certainly a taunt brought against 
those who, in modern times, have named themselves Christians, 
that their religion countenances and embraces a selfish theory 
of morals ; that it aims at rendering a man virtuous by setting 
behind him Fear, with a picture of Dante's hell, and before 
him Hope, with a picture of Milton's heaven. With indi- 
vidual cases we have nothing to do, but, as we proceed, the 
foul imputation will be seen totally to fall away from Chris- 
tianity. 

Whence this torment of self-accusation and alarm, concern- 
ing which we have heard so much ? It arises, says Christianity, 
in its strictly personal reference, from a twofold source ; from 
a sense of imperfection, and a consciousness of guilt. This 
last word is not named by Mr. Carlyle or Fichte ; yet surely 
history, reason, and conscience, authorize us to impute to it a 
weighty significance. Why is it that in every age man has 
striven to propitiate his God ? What mean those altars whose 
smoke lies so darkly along human history, the shrieks of those 
children whom they pass through the fire to Moloch ? What 
specter is that which the human eye has always seen setting a 
crown on the head of Death, a crown of terrors? Most ex- 
plicitly and conclusively of all, what is the word which reason 
utters, when compelled, by its very nature, to seek a cause for 
this torment, whose existence is granted ? Are we not, by 
complicated and overpowering evidence, led to acknowledge 
the fact, however mysterious, of guilt ? We deny not that this 
result is one of exhaustless melancholy ; but, alas ! our tears 
will not wipe out the statutes of the universe ; and the man 
of real fortitude will, of all things, scorn intellectual legerde- 
main, and refuse to accept no fact. Of a sadness not so pro- 
found, but still sad, is the other source of personal anguish 
recognized at this stage by Christianity. It is this on which 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 35 

Mr. Carlyle and Fichte lay stress, but without giving it any 
explanation, and virtually or expressly regarding it as natural 
and right. It is the awakening sense in the bosom of man, 
that he is a stranger here, an exile from a home where a spirit 
could expatiate ; it is the dim agony that comes with returning 
consciousness, when he begins to perceive the iron grating, and 
the chain, and the couch of straw, and when the eye which 
he turns toward the azure is pained and dazzled by the once 
natural light. 

Better is this agony, because it is the pain of one return- 
ing to consciousness, reason, and health, than any wild dreams 
of maniac joy, yet it too is unnatural ; and we shall deem 
no theory of man's life as anywise satisfactory, which tells 
us not how it became necessary, how this imperfection ori- 
ginated, how man came into that dungeon. Without com- 
ment or exposition we state, that Christianity affords a sim- 
ple, natural, and adequate explanation, both of the guilt and 
the imperfection, by its doctrine of the fall. Of the origin of 
evil, we say not one word. But so profoundly does the theory 
that man is now in a state of lapse and distemper, seem to us 
to agree with all that can be gathered from consciousness and 
history ; so perfectly does it explain the glory of his sadness, 
and the sadness of his glory ; so definitely does it intimate 
why the prostrate column and the shattered wall tell of a mind 
in ruin, while yet the gold, and gems, and ivory that shine 
amid the fragments hint that it was once an imperial mansion ; 
so well does it explain the sublime home-sickness which has 
led earth's loftiest sons, despising all that grew on a soil ac- 
cursed — that pleasure by which sense strove to wile away the 
faint reminiscences of other scenes, that wealth which but rep- 
resented the perpetual struggle against death — to go aside 
from the throng, and seek the joys of spirit and the embrace 



36 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

of truth in lonely thought and contemplation ; so satisfactorily 
does it harmonize the loveliness of the dawn, and the horror 
of the battle-field, as existing in one world, that it seems to us 
worthy to be ranlvcd among profound mysteries that it can at 
all be called in question. 

Christianity thus accounts for, and recognizes as seasonable, 
the action of fear on the human mind, which is unable to feel 
itself at peace with God. How does it remove it ? Does it 
enjoin a calculation of advantage"? Does it declare that a 
certain amount of duty performed on the compulsion of ter- 
ror will avert danger, or say that it is possible to perform one 
virtuous action on this compulsion 1 We can, in one or two 
sentences, render a full and conclusive answer. The Chris- 
tian scheme of morals does not recognize as deserving the 
name of virtue what is produced by any external motive, 
what has not its root in the heart. This it intimates in a two- 
fold manner, by express declarations ; and by the whole na- 
ture of that salvation which it offers to man. It explicitly 
declares that the glory of God is to be in all cases the uncon- 
ditional motive of action, the deep and all-pervading spring 
of life. And the whole tenor of its descriptions of that sal- 
vation which it proclaims, renders the idea of its morality 
being produced by external inducement absurd ; it demands a 
new birth, a new creation, a new life ; upon no action will it 
set its seal of approbation, unless it is the fruit of the S^Dirit, 
and springs from holiness and truth in the inward parts. 
Scripture being thus clear and decided, it might be w^ell to 
know to what extent theologians have given color to the 
charge that Christianity is thus selfish. The mode in which 
Christian writers during last century wrote did, to some ex- 
tent, lend it countenance ; the enforcement of virtue by re- 
wards and punishment was, it is probable, too exclusively 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 37 

insisted on ; although it has, we think, been somewhat hardly 
treated, the school of Paley and Butler did tend to give Chris- 
tianity rather the aspect of a mechanism than of a life, did 
rather seek for it a place beside a refined Epicureanism, than 
claim for it its right and natural position, in a more lofty and 
ethereal region than was ever reached by the sublimest specu- 
lation of Platonism. But we have no hesitation in claiming 
for the Puritan theology a freedom from any such error ; and 
in the conclusion of the second chapter of the first book of 
Calvin's Institutes, we have his express declaration that, were 
there no hell, yet, since the Christian loves and reveres God 
as a Father, the dread of oifending Him would alone suffice 
to render him abhorrent of vice. Fear does not produce vir- 
tue ; the fact that a man restrains himself from sin to avoid 
the punishment of hell, is no proof that he is converted. Yet 
fear is not without a function in the system of things. It 
bears not the wedding-garment, and no hand but that of the 
Divine Spirit, working faith in the Christian, and so enabling 
him to appropriate that garment, and clothe himself in it, can 
effect in him that renovation which leads to godly action and 
spiritual joy ; but it goes out into the highways of a blighted 
and delirious world, and there, like a terrible prophet of the 
wilderness, who foretells the coming of the mild Redeemer, 
startles and arouses men. Its office is preliminary, external, 
awakening ; it is the beginning of wisdom. Since, indeed, 
on this earth, the deep-lying disease which renders it neces- 
sary is never altogether removed, its warning voice is never 
altogether silent ; but the humiliating remedy will vanish 
utterly with the disease of which it is a sign, and by which it 
became necessary ; when the Christian goes to take his place 
among the angelic choirs, he will be able to join them in a 
melody that is only love ; and it does not admit of doubt, 



38 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

that every feeling of slavish fear with which any being regards 
God, is strictly of the nature of sin. 

By fear, or by whatever means the Spirit of God may em- 
ploy, the soul is brought to lie down in perfect abasement 
before God, to acknowledge its want, its woe, its weakness, and 
its unreserving consent to receive all from His hand. This is 
what, in the Christian scheme, corresponds to the self-annihi- 
lation of Goethe and Carlyle ; now is the soul brought to that 
stage of utter desolation and bareness which agrees with the 
critical stage of the wanderer's trouble. We can not doubt 
that here we are at the point where the essential nature of 
Christianity is revealed ; that we come within sight of its 
great distinctive virtue, humility. Now it is that the sinful 
finite being, to use the words of Pascal, " makes repeatedly 
fresh efforts to lower himself to the last abysses of nothing- 
ness, while he surveys God still in interminably multiplying 
immensities ;" this is what Vinet pronounces the end of all 
Christian preaching, " to cast the sinner trembling at the foot 
of Mercy." In the melodious, yet heart- wrung wailings which 
float down the stream of ages from the harp of the poet-king 
of Israel, the feelings of such moments found expression; 
such feelings were in the heart of the Pilgrim, when, fleeing 
from the City of Destruction, and fainting under his burden, 
he knelt with clasped hands before the Cross ; and it was in 
this same attitude that the New England Puritan, in utter 
self-abandonment and feeling of the majesty and holiness of 
God, judged himself worthy of damnation, and had scarce 
power to pray. It is but the unqualified acknowledgment 
that man, as he exists in this world, requires the aid of Divine 
power to raise him to that higher state of being to which he 
aspires. It is the disrobing of itself by the soul of all the 
raiment of human virtue ; which, however pure and beauti- 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 39 

ful it may seem to earthly eyes, is not that spiritual glory 
which will beam more fair in its immortality, when the earth 
will have faded away, and all that framework of society, 
which gives occasion and play to the virtue that is between 
man and man, shall have been gathered in by death, alike its 
origin and its end. It is the confession that, however the soul 
of man may wing the atmosphere of earth, it has now no 
pinions on which to ascend into the sunless serenity of celes- 
tial light. 

And now we must be silent, nor attempt to define the new 
birth of the spirit. " In what way," says Coleridge, " or by 
what manner of working, God changes a soul from evil to 
good, how He impregnates the barren rock with priceless 
gems and gold, is to the human mind an impenetrable mys- 
tery in all cases alike." Only this shall we say, that by faith 
the soul lays hold of and unites itself to Jesus, finding in Him 
all that for which it has sought ; His mysterious sacrifice suffi- 
cient to make atonement for guilt, His righteousness a spot- 
less robe in which it may sit forever at the banquet of the 
Almighty King, His name the harmonizing of all contradic- 
tion, the solving of all doubt, the open secret of the universe. 

In a passage which he who has once read can hardly have 
forgotten, so softly pathetic is it, so richly and melodiously 
beautiful, Mr. Carlyle sets, as it were, to lyric music the joy 
of the wanderer's heart when he attains final peace. The in- 
heritance of the Christian is likewise peace, though of another 
nature from that which visited the scathed heart of Teufels 
druckh. This is no reward of proud self-assertion, no rapture 
of philosophic dream : on the Christian, from the eternal heav- 
ens, there now streams down the smile of a living Eye. The 
emotions which befit his state have, from the olden time, been 
voiced in a mild anthem, whose divine simplicity and angelic 



40 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

music are beautiful as the morning star, and to which we may 
imagine the saints of God, in the future eternity, attuning 
their harps, when memory wanders back to the little earth, 
and they think of that humility which is the highest glory of 
the finite. In that anthem the Hebrew minstrel sung of him- 
self as a stricken lamb resting in Jehovah's arms. The peace 
of the Christian is to feel the circling of those arms, as he lies 
in the light of that countenance. 

We are compelled to be very brief. We can but add a 
few fragmentary remarks, which we pray readers to regard 
rather as partial indications of what might be said, than as 
any unfolding of the momentous and inspiring themes to 
which they relate. We should like to discuss, first, the ethi- 
cal value of this theory of conversion in that precise point 
where it contrasts with pantheism ; next, the mode in which 
it tranquilizes the mind which is agitated by a sense of the 
sorrowful mysteries of human destiny, and the dark paths of 
divine justice ; then, the Christian theory of work ; and, lastly, 
the Christian theory of heaven. We can but offer one or two 
words on each. 

We accept from the hands of Mr. Carlyle and Goethe the 
far-trumpeted doctrine of self-renunciation ; we listen to Fichte, 
and to the whole of that lofty spiritualistic school of which he 
may be considered the head, and bear witness to their em- 
phatic and eloquent proclamation of the sin and blasphemy 
of selfishness, and we boldly assert that it is in Christian con- 
version alone that self-renunciation is attained, that self is 
actually conquered. Of all that holds of pantheism, of the ge- 
nius-worship of the day, of the idealistic or emotional religiosity 
now so common, of all which professes to work in the human 
bosom a benign and self conquering revolution by the evolving 
of any hidden nobleness lying there, or reference to any perfect 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 41 

internal light hitherto obscured, we affirm that it utterly fails 
to approach the root of the evil. When laid down in the most 
perfect and plausible philosophic form, these views are thus 
powerless, and, in application to practical life, the perils which 
encompass them are obvious and unavoidable. To denounce 
the sensual life is no great achievement or novelty in ethics ; 
a moderately enlightened Epicureanism has always done that. 
But how can I apply the term of self-renunciation to an act 
which is really and merely the assertion of self, of spiritual 
self, that is 1 What is this more than the purchase of a lofty 
and delicious pride, by the sacrifice of the garbage of sense ? 
Self, on every such theory, leaves the coarse dwelling of sen- 
sual pleasure, but it is only to rear for its own royal abode, a 
palace of gold and cedar. And if the commands of a serene 
spiritualism may, in the case of the philosopher, repel the ad- 
vances of sense, who that has ever cast his eye over life can 
refuse to concede that they would be all unheeded on that wild 
arena ; while the absence of any precise definition or appli- 
cable test of the spiritual and divine in the individual breast, 
would leave a broad avenue, the more inviting that it was 
lined by academic plane-trees, to all manner of delusion, ex- 
travagance, and absurdity. 

This is a delicate, soft-stepping, silken-slippered age, patron- 
izing the finer feelings and a high-flown emotional virtue ; vice 
has cast away its coarse and tattered garment, and, though 
finding no great difficulty in obtaining admittance into good 
society, must come with sleek visage, in a spruce, modern 
suit, glittering with what seems real gold ; the religion that 
languishes in luxurious aspirings or dreams, is very wiiely 
approved of. But does not an elevated and insidious but fatal ^^, 
pride tend to pervade the moral atmosphere of the time? 
We will glow in lofty ardor over the page of Fichte, Carlyle, 



42 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

Schiller or Goethe, but it is a balmy and consoling air which 
breathes its mild adulation through our souls ; for is it not 
our own nobleness which is so gratefully evoked 1 We will 
worship in the Temple of the Universe, with a certain and 
proud homage, like that of the stars, and winds, and oceans ; 
but our lordly knees must not be soiled by getting down into 
the dust. We will perform with Goethe the great moral act 
of self-annihilation, and wrap ourselves, with much ado, in the 
three reverences : but it were strangely bigoted to weep like 
an old Puritan, because we can not leap from sin our shadow. 
Christianity, we proclaim, is pervading the age more deeply 
than ever before ; not now as a constraining and antiquated 
form, but as an essence and life ; not, indeed, with remarkable 
definiteness, not troubling itself to answer such minor ques- 
tions as whether Christ's history is an actual fact, or whether 
Paul was an inspired preacher or a moral genius troubled with 
whims, but with a grand expansiveness and philosophic toler- 
ance, sweet to remark ; casting a respectful and even deferring 
glance toward its plebeian ancestor of Judea, in whose steps, 
however, an enlightened descendant can not exactly walk. 
As of old, it remains true that Christianity alone preaches 
humility, and that this preaching is ever the special offense of 
the Cross ; rather tread the burning marl in pride than re- 
ceive mercy only from God. But for the fallen finite being, 
this is the true position toward the Infinite ; from this Chris- 
tianity can not swerve. We proceed to our second point. 

There is a pain which arises from inability to recognize the 
facts of divine justice, and from human sympathy with that 
part of mankind which rejects the Christian salvation, and 
meets the doom foretold. It is a sorrow which we believe 
never on earth departs entirely from noble minds, and is, per- 
haps, not intended to depart ; that sympathetic agony which, 



THEINDIVIDUALLIFE. 43 

in virtue of our human unity, we feel with every brother suf- 
ferer, whatever his sin, is doubtless designed to be one of our 
most mighty incentives to spread the Gospel and to urge its 
acceptance. But, if Christianity does not altogether remove 
this pain, it does more to that end than any other system ; 
if there are clouds in the heavens which not even the tele- 
scope of faith can yet resolve into worlds of light, it can open 
a prospect infinitely more glorious and consoling than presents 
itself to the unaided eye. If we might conceive any sentence 
as written over the throne of God, kindling the eyes of the 
cherubim, it would surely be this : " God is Love." Chris- 
tianity came, as it were, with the intimation that such words 
were inscribed by the hand of Eternal Truth ; faith, gazing 
from the far station of earth, might be unable to decipher the 
separate letters, and might see them only as blended into one 
star-beam, falling through time's night, but even in that beam 
there was infinite consolation and infinite hope. What does 
philosophy say of the future of the race 1 Either it dismisses, 
as the vagary of superstition, all idea of the possibility of the 
future visiting of sin by retribution, and thus leaves unstilled 
man's instinctive and indestructible apprehensions, and unac- 
counted for a dumb yet adamantine array of facts. Chris- 
tianity at least postpones the difficulty ; it refers it to eternity 
and to God. It bestows the sublime privilege of waiting upon 
the Most High ; it permits the weak and wildered creature of 
finitude to watch the unfolding of the schemes of almighty 
Wisdom under the eye of almighty Love ; and it is not pre- 
sumptuous to think that one great fountain of that felicity, 
on which, as on an ocean stream, the souls of the blessed 
will eternally float, will burst forth in the sudden discovery 
of the might of that love, and the depth of that wisdom, in 
the disposal of every fate. When God wipes away all tears 



44 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

from the eyes of His own, He will wipe away, also, those 
noblest, and perhaps hottest tears that are shed on earth — tears 
over the lost. 

The Christian theory of work can be expressed in a few 
words, yet its full exposition and illustration were one of the 
most sublime pages in sacred poetry. " Faith that worketh 
by love ;" it is all here. The basis is faith ; we need Scarce 
say it must lie at the root of all action ; whatever truth the 
age may have forgotten, there is one truth which has been ut- 
tered in strains of eloquence, so earnest and overpowering, 
that it bids fair to be for some time remembered ; that a man 
or nation is mighty in work, precisely as he or it believes. 
Give a people faith, and though its tribes lie scattered and 
powerless over its desert domain, like the dismembered limbs 
of a giant, it will gather itself together, and arise and stride 
forth along the shaking earth, till every nation trembles at the 
name of Islam ; give a man faith, and though his heart be 
narrow and his brain confined, and what he believes an ab- 
surdity and dream, he will pass by hundreds of abler men 
who occasionally doubt, and, trampling them in their gore, 
will control a fiery nation, and reign in terror, till the name 
of Robespierre is a trembling and abhorrence over the whole 
earth. But, if all belief is powerful in action, if even belief 
in an idea make a man resistless, of what nature will that 
work be, whose hidden root only is faith, but all whose bloom 
and outgoing is love 1 And thus it is in Christianity. We 
enter not at all upon discussion of the nature of saving faith ; 
but this is, at least and beyond doubt, implied in it, that the 
believer is certain that God loves him, that in Christ He is 
his reconciled Father. For one moment ponder this thought. 
The man has faith that God loves him ; with all the emphasis 
of that strongest of human words, he lays it to his heart that 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 46 

an affection is in the bosom of the Eternal for him. What 
will be the instant result, by all we know even of fallen man ? 
We suspect it is not possible for a human heart altogether to 
resist the attraction even of human love ; the blind and selfish 
affection of passion which impiously arrogates the name may 
be scorned and hated, but deep, unselfish, spiritual love can 
not surely be known to exist toward us in any bosom, without 
awakening some responsive thrill. And if it is possible be- 
tween man and man, it is assuredly impossible between man 
and God. It is not given to the human being to resist the at- 
traction of infinite tenderness, when once faith has seen the 
eye of God looking down upon His accepted child ; after long 
waiting, when at last the balmy drops descend, the fountains 
must spring. And what is the relief, the joy, the blessedness, 
of him that loves ? Is it not the pouring forth of this love, 
the urging of it into every channel where it is possible for it 
to flow "? Yes : and this is the Christian scheme of work ; 
that he, whose breast swells with the irrepressible love of 
God, finds duty transmuted actually into its own reward, and 
every labor but fuel to enable the flame of his joy to go up 
toward heaven. The psychological verity of this whole 
scheme is perfect. Why is it that when the heart of the youth 
or maiden has once been filled with love, when its whole 
compass has been occupied as with molten gold by affection 
for some beloved fellow- creature, if this beloved proves false 
or dies, it is no very uncommon circumstance that madness or 
death ensue 1 Is it not because the outgoing of love is pre- 
vented, and instead of issuing forth to wrap its object, instead 
of welling out in streams of joy, in offices of affection to that 
object, it must struggle in its fountain, and burn the heart that 
harbors it 1 And may we not, in the face of Stephen, radi- 
ant in death, in the triumph-song of Paul when about to be 



46 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

offered, in the ecstatic hymns on the lips of the early martyrs 
as they went to the stake, find reliable evidence that there 
may be a love in the human breast for a Father God which 
will seek, as in an agony, for some channel in which to flow 
forth ? And never can it have to seek in vain ; in the inner 
kingdom of the soul, in the outer kingdom of the world, there 
is ever work to be done for God, ever some commaudment to 
be fulfilled by which the Christian may prove that he loves his 
Saviour. 

Of this last duty and joy as permitted to the Christian, we 
must say one word. It were certainly a strange mistake, it 
would indicate an interesting, almost enviable freshness and 
spring verdure of intellect, to imagine that the refutation of 
an error would prove its destruction. Even at this day, and 
in publications by theological professors, you may find it de- 
clared that Calvinism circumscribes the freedom and fullness 
of the oflTer of redemption. Singular ! If you gather all the 
human race into one congregation, be I the most rigid of 
intelligent Calvinists, I will put to my lips the trumpet of the 
Gospel, and proclaim that whosoever will may come and 
drink of the water of life freely. If you bring me to a hoary 
sinner, who has defied God for a lifetime, and who now shakes 
with the palsy of death, I will tell him that God yet waits to 
be gracious, and willeth not his death. And will my plead- 
ing with this dying transgressor be the less earnest and hope- 
ful, because I have not to trust to the feeble efficacy of my 
words, or the grasp of his expiring faculties, but may look 
and pray for the extension of a Divine arm to seize and res- 
cue his soul "? Because God has not taken me into His confi- 
dence, has not unfolded to me the Book of Life, and showed 
me the names of those chosen before the foundation of the 
world, will I not design to be His instrument, to save whom 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 47 

He pleases ? You dispatch a thousand vessels from this har- 
bor, yet you know certain of them will be the prey of the 
tempest. You ship your compass ; lioio does it act 1 You 
fix the lightning-rod on the mast ; why^ and in what precise 
manner, does it call down the fire of heaven'? Calvinism 
makes it a duty to proclaim the Gospel freely : but, in accord- 
ance with the whole analogy of nature, it covers up in mys- 
tery God's creative work. 

In speaking of work, have we not already come to speak of 
heaven 1 We have. By beginning with work, we arrived at 
joy ; we shall now, beginning from joy, see whether it will 
not lead us to work. Butler defines happiness to consist in 
" a faculty's having its proper object." " Pleasure," says Sir 
William Hamilton, "is the reflex of unimpeded energy." 
The two expressions explain and agree with each other : the 
latter, indeed, embraces the former. We doubt not they are 
substantially true, and would enable us to classify every de- 
gree and order of happiness from the highest to the lowest ; 
it always remaining true that, however base or diluted might 
be the joy of activity, and though, relatively, even painful, it 
might yet be named pleasure, in contrast with the state of 
compulsory inactivity : the pleasure of revenge is poor and 
contemptible, yet it is a joy compared with its unsatisfied 
gnawing. And whatever might be the lowest and feeblest 
form of joy, it can not admit of question what would be the 
highest. It would assuredly be the activity of love. We 
have no sooner uttered the word than we are at the gate of 
the Ciiristian heaven. When the heart begins to go out in 
love to God, heaven has commenced within it, and the certi- 
tude of an eternal heaven is found in this, that it is toward an 
Infinite God that it goes out. Provision is thus made at once 
for endless activity and endless love. There has been much 



48 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

written in our day about the worship of sorrow, and a great 
truth lies under the words ; this truth, freed of its encumber- 
ing falsehood, Christianity embraces ; it speaks of tribulation 
as that through which we enter into the kingdom of heaven, 
and gives sorrow the high office of breaking the soul to hu- 
mility and contriteness, that it may kneel at the feet of Jesus. 
But, if there is any one instinctive utterance of the human 
soul to which we would accord consent, it is the declaration 
that sorrow, whatever it may subserve, is a blot upon God's 
universe, is the fang of the snake sin, is the shadow cast by 
the wings of the great dragon that has come up from the bot- 
tomless pit to prey on man ; and that, if well interpreted, the 
worship of joy is higher than the worship of sorrow. But 
how completely is all that insinuation about Christianity 
being allied to a selfish theory of morals now seen to vanish ! 
The Christian does not serve God for happiness, but God by 
a sublime necessity has attached happiness to His service. 
Along the ranks of His army goes the command to rejoice ; 
above it floats the banner of love. Felicity is the light which 
rests over it all. From the helmets of the seraphim that light 
is flashed back in fall unclouded blaze ; on us of the human 
race who, as Isaac Taylor says beautifully, " seem to stand 
almost on the extreme confines of happiness," its first rays 
are even now descending. Happiness is the spheral music in 
which a God, whose name is Love, has ordained that holiness 
must voice itself; His light, as it sweeps over the ^olean 
harp of immensity, kindling every dead world into beauty, 
breaks forth in the Memnonian anthem of joy. 

And have we no distinctive character to assign to that state 
and that locality which, in common discourse, receive the 
special name of heaven ? In the essential character of the 
happiness of the future heaven, we can point to no change, 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 49 

but in circumstances there is a mighty alteration. Fichte, 
importunately insisting that a party, which we take to be that 
of evangelical Christianity, expects a sensuous heaven, points 
in triumph to the fact that the eye is by it turned to futurity 
when there can be but an objective change ; while all that is 
subjective in heaven's bliss must be enjoyed now or never. 
The philosopher is doubly at fault : to represent sublunary 
delights as filling, even to the most joyful, for any considera- 
ble time, the immeasurable capacity of joy possessed by man, 
can be considered merely as a flourish of philosophic poetry ; 
while, had he for a moment reflected, he must have consid- 
ered it but fliir to concede to those against whom he argued, 
that object and subject are so closely connected, that we must 
almost conceive ourselves beyond the bounds of finitude ere 
we can conceive their mutual independence. It is true that 
the difference between the inheritance of the saints on earth 
and their inheritance in light, is one of circumstances ; it is 
true, too, that sorrow as well as fear in the Christian bosom is 
the sign or the result of sin, and that the more faith now 
drinks of the cup of joy, the more does it obey divine injunc- 
tion ; yet we should deem it mournful indeed, if the Gospel 
did not point the eye of hope to some great outbreaking of 
light, as to mark a certain stage in the Christian's history. 
And such there is ; and so great is its brightness, that there 
is a propriety in the habit of appropriating to the ages which 
succeed it the special name of celestial. Those who desire to 
form some conception of the peculiar glory of these ages, of 
which we can not speak here at length, we would advise to 
read Butler's sublime sermon on the Love of God, to ponder 
it deeply, and to follow out its suggestive meaning. Butler 
there aims at indicating the exhaustless sources of joy which 
would be found in the contemplation of the divine nature, 

3 



60 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

We can here offer only one or two themes of meditation, sup- 
plementary to this central consideration. Let it then be 
thought what a power there is toward the impeding and shad- 
owing of happiness, in the very fact that this is a world of 
prevailing sin. "VVe fight here under the cloud : we can have 
little hope that we will hear the final shout of victory. And 
as we go to each charge, do we not see around us the fallen 
and the dying 1 Are we not aware that over the whole earth 
there is always sorrow, and have we not to dim the eye of 
imagination, and close the gates of sympathy, that we cry not 
out at the spectacles of grief which are ever, in woeful pagean- 
try, passing onward toward the grave ? How true is this of 
Mrs. Browning's ! 

" The fool Lath said there is no God. 
But none, there is no sorrow." 

Every human heart must throb to that touch of beautiful 
pathos, in which the author of Festus bodies forth the depth 
and earnestness of human woe. Among the celestial bands 
an angel is seen in tears ; a word of amazement passes along 
at the sight of an angel weeping ; but the wonder is soon ex- 
plained. 

"It is the angel of the earth, 
She is always weeping." 

While our step is on such a world as earth, we must know 
the thrills of sympathetic anguish. Surely it will be an un- 
measured access of joy when the cloud of sin, smitten by the 
light of eternity, finally rolls away, and bares the sunless 
heavens. Consider, again, the joy that may arise in the 
heavenly ages from the contemplation of the works of God. 
Even here it can not be questioned that serene and exquisite 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 61 

enjoyment is obtained by pure and elevated minds m gazing 
on the greatness and beauty of nature. But the mind now 
may be compared to a mountain lake, in which, indeed, at 
times, the silent and beautiful hills, and the calm flowers, and 
forest foliage, and the clouds touched by the finger of morn or 
eve, may glass themselves, but which is ever and anon ruffled 
and obscured by the rude tempest. And who can tell how far 
this enjoyment may be enhanced, when the sympathies are all 
true and harmonious, and vibrating to the music of love ? 
What mortal man can guess the rapture which fills the eyes 
of the seraphim as they sweep onward among the stars of 
God ! Lastly, not to multiply instances, can we not even now 
perceive, that from Christian friendship, as it would exist in 
heaven, there would result an exhaustless and unutterable joy. 
Tlie one complaint that noble minds have against society is, 
that its vast texture of forms and gradations prevents kindred 
hearts from uniting, thwarts the action of sympathy. As- 
suredly the highest terrestrial pj is that of perfect friendship ; 
and how rare, how nearly impossible, is perfect friendship 
here! 

"Are we not form'd, as notes of music are, 
For one another, though dissimilar ?" 

Yet the harmony that can result from this union in diversity 
is scarce to be seen on earth. It is no vague imagination, but 
what can be clearly deduced from Scripture and reason, and 
easily embraced in thought, that from the friendship of the 
redeemed, knit in perfect sympathy of divine love, will spring 
a joy which the harps of heaven will scarce have chords to 
voice. 

Such considerations as these might be multiplied indefi- 
nitely, and that with strict adherence to truth. The prospect 



52 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 

opened up to us is sublime indeed. And if its glory admitted 
of enhancement, would it not arise from casting a look back 
upon the stricken and lowly penitent, as he lay in Christian 
humility, expecting all from the hand of God? Here it is, 
every way, as in the case of physical science ; which, beginning 
with bare algebraic formula, climbs upward from system to 
system, till it is encompassed with the blaze of an inconceiv- 
able glory, and the wing of human imagination is seen feebly 
fluttering far below. 

We close this chapter with an allusion to a passage in 
Fichte's Way to the Blessed Life, which has struck us as very 
remarkable. After confessing that neither himself nor any 
other philosopher had ever succeeded in elevating, by popular 
instruction, those who " either will not or can not study phi- 
losophy systematically, to the comprehension of its fundamen- 
tal truths," he distinctly allows that " Christ's Apostles," and 
a succession of " very unlearned persons," have possessed this 
essential knowledge. He discriminates well the scientific and 
developed knowledge of philosophy from the life-knowledge 
of its fundamental truths. But, might it not have occurred to 
him that perhaps this strange exception might have another 
meaning and cause than any of which he dreamed ; that phi- 
losophy had, for some special reason, failed to do what the few 
poor men of Judea accomplished ? Might he not have con- 
ceived it possible that the Gospel of Jesus had actually some 
wondrous power of getting at the life 1 If he missed the truth, 
let us hold by it. We think there is a profound meaning in 
the following sentences of Neander, used in reference to primi- 
tive Christianity : — " It belonged, indeed, to the essence of 
Christianity, that while it could become all things to all men, 
and adapt itself to the most different and opposite circum- 
stances of human nature, it could condescend even to wholly 



THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 53 

sensuous modes of comprehending divine things, in order, by 
the power of a divine life^ working from within, gradually to 
spiritualize them. * * * In this respect, the great saying 
of the apostle may often have found its application, that the 
divine treasure was received— and for a season preserved — in 
earthen vessels, that the abundant power might be of God, 
and not of man." Let this be well pondered, and that superi- 
ority in Christianity which Fichte acknowledges over his or 
any other philosopher's teaching, may be explained. Cole- 
ridge spake truly when he said that philosophy was in the 
Pagan night as the fire-fly of the tropics, making itself visible, 
but not irradiating the darkness. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE SOCIAL LIFE. 



We open this chapter with the following proposition: — 
Religion is the only stable basis on which a commonwealth 
can be reared. This, we think, might be demonstrated by 
clear, unimpassioned, inductive reasoning ; we desire to trace 
in outline one or two of the main divisions of the proof. 

The first, and perhaps, all things considered, the most im- 
portant argument in its support, is to be derived from the 
analogy of the individual. It is an indisputable fact that the 
community has, so to speak, a distinct personality ; that it is 
not a mere collection of individuals. Yet, we venture to say, 
that the more careful and protracted our observation of the 
man and the nation is, and the more profound our reflection 
upon the phenomena presented by each, the more firm will 
our assurance become that a strict analogy holds between 
them. So strong is our conviction of this, that Butler's demon- 
stration of the supremacy of conscience in the individual bosom 
is quite sufficient to satisfy us that the healthful and natural 
state of the nation is exhibited, only when the national con- 
science is dominant, when religion prevails. The political 
Butler has not yet appeared ; but a noble task avraits him. 
He will show how, as the man who listens to the voice of con- 



THE SOCIAL LIFE. 55 

science, who can stand apart from his fellows, and, over all the 
brawling of the popular wind, hear the still small voice of con- 
science as supreme on earth, and turn his eye at its monition 
toward heaven for an approval which will make him independ- 
ent of human opinion, is he who is most true to his nature ; 
so the nation which would rightly occupy its position in the 
world must have aims above all that is sublunary, and hold 
itself as a nation responsible to God. 

The second source of argument on this point is the evidence 
of history. More express and conclusive evidence than is de- 
rivable from this source, we can scarce conceive. Of many 
things the historical student may be doubtful, but of this at 
least he must be sure : That no amount of wealth, no extent 
of culture, has ever given a nation strength and stability, when 
the religious element has been in decay. Let it be noted that 
we now speak of the development and power of the religious 
faculty ; we treat not the subordinate, though important ques- 
tion, whether the religion is true or false. And we bid any 
man consider the whole history of Judea, of Greece, of Rome, 
of Italy, and we may add of France, and declare, whether the 
nation is capable of avoiding some one fatal peril or another 
which is not strongly religious. Either foreign subjugation, or 
domestic despotism, or maniac anarchy, has ever overtaken the 
godless nation ; and, in all times, the nation that had a faith, 
that reverenced an oath, has put a bridle in the teeth of the 
unbelieving peoples. 

The only other department of proof to which we can refer 
is that of the testimony of great individual thinkers. It is in- 
teresting to note how, we might say without exception, the 
great thinkers and workers of all time have agreed in this. 
Consider the amount and the nature of the evidence to be de- 
rived from that one source, the construction of ancient and 



66 THE SOCIAL LIFE. 

modern politics. Every legislator requires this as his bower- 
anchor; every man who attempts to establish a common- 
wealth, or to rule an empire, commences with religion. That 
he was himself an irreligious man, or skeptic, mattered little. 
Whether he were a Zoroaster or Mahomet, or a Ptolemy 
Lagus or Napoleon, it was the same ; the point of the national 
pyramid, each felt, must point to heaven. And the testimony 
of thinkers is equally explicit. Plato virtually makes religior 
the base of his republic; and Mr. Carlyle is, in our day, again 
proclaiming, in what manner, or with what likelihood of suc- 
cess, we say not, the same truth. In one of Bacon's Essays, 
you find his authority, and that of Cicero, like one sword with 
two edges, knit together. The fact is explicitly stated by 
Montesquieu ; and, while the influence of what was or was not 
named the positive philosophy has here affected injuriously 
our last schools of political economy, even they are compelled 
to lend their indirect suffrage. One of the most healthy 
thinkers of recent times, Thomas Chalmers, gave the strength 
of his life to enunciate and enforce the momentous doctrine. 

Our initial proposition being established, we proceed to in- 
quire in what way, in the internal arrangements of society, a 
pantheistic theory of things would naturally and logically be 
embodied : we shall then note briefly the basis on which Chris- 
tianity places social relations. 

The works of Mr. Carlyle, in one great aspect of them, are 
a series of endeavors, or rather one great connected endeavor, 
to bring the state into approximation to that condition in which 
rank, power, and possession, w^ould be exactly graduated by 
ability. And this were a result fraught with so many benefi- 
cent consequences that, it must be acknowledged, that the ex- 
tent to which he has succeeded in striking and infusing his 
great idea into cotemporary literature and the public mind in 



THESOCIALLIFE. • 5*^ 

general, is to be considered a grateful and promising achieve- 
ment. It is, however, an indubitable fact, that an error in the 
original axioms on which any system of teaching is based, 
although in the course of that teaching separate and partial 
truths may find advocacy or enforcement, will show itself in 
any attempt to reduce theory to practice, and will most likely, 
we might perhaps say certainly, neutralize or poison the very 
truths amid which, erewhile, it lurked in concealment. And 
thus we conceive it to be with the teaching of Mr. Carlyle : it 
contains invaluable truth, yet in the original fountain was a 
poison-drop, which will be found, if its streams ever come to 
irrigate the general fields of life, to kill the plants it was ex- 
pected to nourish, and leave a sterile w^aste where men looked 
for the bloom and the opulence of a garden of God. 

The fundamental axiom of that pantheism of which we 
recognize Mr. Carlyle as the great living advocate, we found 
to be, that man is divine. The great man is he in whom the 
divinity is most clearly manifested. This being so, how, we 
ask, would that graduation proceed of which we have spoken ? 
It would tend altogether to the exaltation of the great man ; 
if such a thing as worship could exist, it would be worship of 
him : if a theory of government were to be propounded, it 
would be that in which his wisdom ruled without let, and his 
will was absolute. If my fellow is more divine than I, it is 
right that I bow down to him, it is right that I serve him : and 
it is no difficult task to show, that the good things of tliis life 
will plenteously result to me from my doing so. In one word, 
if well traced out, the legitimate social theory of pantheism 
would be despotism. In the course of this volume, we shall 
have occasion to mark, in certain important departments of 
social life, the development of this theory, and to discover 
whether Mr. Carlyle's own ultimate teaching confirms our 
3* 



58 THE SOCIAL LIFE. 

view ; for the present, we can merely state it without exposing 
defects or considering advantages. 

Christianity is able to accept from Mr. Carlyle all that is 
of value in his doctrines, while avoiding those perils with which 
they would prove unable to contend. It bids me not to bow 
down to any fellow mortal ; yet it may enjoin my according 
him all respect consistent with manliness ; it bids me not to 
take commands from any absolute will with the servile cringe 
of the slave, yet it makes room for hearty and strenuous 
obedience. All this it does by the recognition of two great 
doctrines : the absolute sovereignty of God ; and the relative 
sovereignty, yet absolute equality, of man. It sets the world, 
so to speak, in a particular point of view, and by so doing 
makes every thing plain ; it represents it as the Lord's, as a 
field, or a vineyard, in which He has certain grand objects to 
accomplish. It shows every man to be a servant; and to 
every man who is a dutiful servant, it dispenses an equality of 
honor, and in certain grand particulars, nay, in all, though we 
can not now stay to make good the point, an equality of re- 
ward. To endeavor to define and enumerate the ends which 
Divine Providence has in view with man in this world, were a 
rash and impotent attempt. But we certainly know that the 
great end of all things is the glory of God ; that His glory is 
manifested in the perfection of His creatures ; and that He, in 
His benignity, has ordained that an integral part of perfection 
is joy, that the higher man or nation ascends on that path, the 
richer are the fruits and the more beautiful the flowers which 
line the way. And it is not impossible, with the light of rev- 
elation and the voice of history, to discern the grand outline 
of that method by which God has ordained and commanded 
man, in slow progress through the centuries, to work out his 
perfection as a species. On the one hand, he has a freedom 



THE SOCIAL LIFE. 59 

from God, which it is his duty to preserve, which he dare not 
alienate ; on the other, in order to his progress, God has re- 
vealed to him, first, by the fact of an experienced necessity, 
and, second, by the direct sanction of His word, that civil gov- 
ernment, the more or less complete merging of individual 
freedom in public law, is also a divine ordinance. In the 
former of these it is implied, that every faculty which God has ty 
bestowed upon or committed to the individual perform its full 
and appropriate work, or reach its perfect and congenial de- 
velopment ; that the intellectual powers have a fair sphere for 
their operation, that the conscience be untrammeled, that the 
will exercise its legitimate authority over thought and action, 
and that each capacity of enjoyment be duly gratified. All 
this we hold to be implied in the perfection of individual free- 
dom ; and all this Christianity guarantees in its declaration of 
the essential equality, the blood-unity, of all men, and its com- 
mand that all work be done, that every faculty operate, with 
might. In the latter, in the ordinance of civil government, it 
is implied that every man perform not only his own primary 
and direct duty, but that he subserve the performance of all 
other duty ; that he play, so to speak, into the hand of every other 
man ; that he make way where he is himself superfluous, that 
he obey where his service is necessary to the performance of a 
duty which he is himself incompetent to effect ; in one word, 
that he recognize as right all that graduation of rank accordmg 
to work done, which nature tends to effect. This is the true 
theory of divine right : that the real, the natural power be 
obeyed. Let it not be imagined that this is a divine sanction 
of any particular form, or any particular depository of gov- 
erning power ; Christianity does not change a living body into 
a mummy or petrifaction, and command men to obey it ; it 
sanctions the power, and if the time has come for this power 



60 THE SOCIAL LIFE. 

to be born, the giant child may hear its sanctioning voice in 
the womb of futurity, and tear its way, amid what throes so- 
ever, to life and inheritance. In the darkest and most bar- 
barous times, this social theory of Christianity will be a guid- 
ing light ; when civilization shall be completed, when freedom 
and law shall have become one, and not till then, it shall have 
been wrought out. 

In the following pages we shall have occasion to trace a few 
of its gradual developments ; and, first of all, we shall consider 
that defamed agency which yet Isaac Taylor scruples not to 
call the latest impersonation of the spirit of Christianity, 
Christian Philanthropy. 



PART TWO. 

EXPOSITION AND ILLUSTRATION. 



BOOK ONE. 

CHRISTIANITY THE BASIS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



CHAPTER I. 

FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

OF CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY, HERO-WORSHIP, AJfD THE ORiaiN" 
AKD END OF LAW. 

Proposing, in this book, to glance generally at a few of the 
characteristic social agencies of our time, it seems to us an 
orderly and perspicuous method to regard modern Christian 
philanthropy as a fitting representative of those agencies, and 
its consideration, for that reason, a meet introduction to their 
cursory survey. We shall not allege it to be a principal 
agency in our present and prospective social system. But we 
do think that, in its treatment, we are brought eye to eye 
with that problem on which the future of the free nations de- 
pends ; and that an inquiry into its fundamental principles, 
and a survey of its development, lead us by a natural path to 
the full statement and comprehension of that problem. With 
this statement we purpose concluding the present division of 
our subject. We consider, then, in the outset, the essential 
and fundamental ideas of Christian Philanthropy. 

We do not affirm that there is any thing positively new in 



64 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

the idea of this philanthropy. It is as old as love. Its his- 
tory began to be written in the first tear wliich fell from a 
human eye, over one whose only claim was pity, and whose 
only plea was sorrow. But we shall not be required to prove 
that there is such a thing in our day as " the philanthropic 
movement :" we may safely allege the fact that simple pity, 
love for the wretched as such, has become a more formal and 
recognizable power in our time than heretofore. Of this we 



That our conception of Christian Philanthropy may be 
clearly perceived, and that it may be known at once what 
we believe to be its true nature, and what we are willing to 
stand by as its defensible positions, we shall state, in four 
categories, what we deem its grand fundamental proposi- 
tions. 

I. In the system of human affairs, there is a distinct, trace- 
able, and indispensable function, to be performed by com- 
passion. 

II. All men are, in a definable sense, equal. All human 
law is grounded on expediency ; on what is temporal and not 
eternal. Eevenge is foreign to the idea of law. 

III. It is not a possible case that hatred be the highest and 
most reasonable feeling with which one human being can re- 
gard another. There can not, upon earth, exist, in the human 
form, any one whom it is not noble and holy to love. 

IV. It is impossible, in this world, that the traces of the 
divine image be absolutely obliterated from the human soul. 
God has not revealed to man any period at which it is either 
incumbent on, or lawful for him, to abandon hope and effort 
that his brother may attain to that higher nature which is at 
once the restoration and elevation of humanity. 

These categories are closely connected with each other, and 



FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 65 

a more searching analysis might doubtless afford clearer lines 
of demarcation; but, for practical purposes, we think they 
will serve. The first is the general declaration with which 
philanthropy, as such, sets out. The second leads us to define 
its true relation to justice. The third is intimately associated 
with the second, and is the Christian rule of feeling, as ex- 
pressed by our Saviour. The fourth indicates the rationale 
of every effort toward reclamation of the criminal or con- 
demned. 

At its first arising. Philanthropy was hailed with acclama- 
tion. Without hesitation, apparently without question, and 
almost with universal voice, men affirmed its light to be holy, 
and its influence, of necessity, benign. Be the cause, how- 
ever, what it may, we now find matters altered. Philan- 
thropy, it is true, has pervaded the nation, and more is done 
at the simple cry of compassion than was ever done before ; 
but it has been assailed with vituperation and contempt, 
scarcely condescending to argue ; while it furnishes every petty 
novelist and scribbler with subjects of caricature, and targets 
for small arrows that stick because they are viscous with 
venom, not because they are pointed with wit. The chief 
argumentative assailant of philanthropy is a man whose 
words must always deserve calm and thorough consideration, 
whose name alone is a battery — Mr. Carlyle. Caricaturists 
and small wits might be left to shift for themselves, after we 
had demonstrated, if that proved to be in our power, the value 
and reasonableness of philanthropy ; but to leave them thus 
altogether, were to fall into the mistake of supposing that 
nothing can injure which has little force, or that men are not 
in the habit, every day, and scores of times every day, of 
holding apples so near to their eyes that they shut out the 
light of the sun. We consider, therefore, a few words (and 



66 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

they shall be as few as we can possibly make them) not 
wholly wasted on the subject of the ridicule to which philan- 
thropy is in our day exposed : they may prove applicable to 
the sense of the ridiculous as exercised on every kind of relig- 
ious or moral action or emotion. 

We are by no means among those who utter a sweeping 
condemnation against all laughter in the serious provinces of 
human affairs : we consider the sense of the ridiculous ex- 
tremely valuable in a man and a nation. In every depart- 
ment of art, of literature, and of life, it prunes a fantastic or 
grotesque exuberance, keeping down, to give it in one word, 
excessive idiosyncrasy. It is, by its nature, in close league 
with common sense ; it is the mortal foe of bombast, senti- 
mentality, softness, and every sort of pretense. We regard 
the strong sense of the ridiculous inherited by the English 
people as one of the healthiest characteristics. It may at 
present threaten to degenerate into universal titter ; but, in 
its native strength and soundness, it preserves us in a fine 
mean between the French and the Germans; between the 
'•'gesticulating nation that has a heart, and wears it on its 
sleeve," and the nation that thinks walls, and holds the empire 
of the air.'* We imagine there is much in our literature at 
present which might be bettered by a little smart satire : it is 
a tonic we can not well do without. 

And we claim no exemption for philanthropy from the 
restraining or tempering power of a sound sense of ther^idic- 

* " Gentlemen, think the wall :" — these were the words in which 
Fichte commenced his philosophic lectures in Jena. However idealis- 
tic, we can scarcely conceive a British audience not being touched 
with a feeling of drollery by the words: the Germans sat like stucco. 
Let it not be thought from this remark that I intend the faintest dis- 
respect for the majestic genius and noble character of Fichte. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 67 

ulous, resulting in manly and discriniinating satire. As- 
suredly, like every other human thing, it may run into absurd- 
ity or excess, and, in particular instances, may furnish legiti- 
mate objects of caricature. 

But satire has its laws : as sure and imperative laws as any 
other species of composition. And in these it certainly is in- 
cluded, both that it must never be absolutely in error, and 
that it must never be absolutely frivolous. There is a national 
mirth which comports with earnestness and reverence, and is 
beautiful as the smile of natural and fearless strength ; but 
there is such a thing as the laughter of national paralysis, and 
what more ghastly than that 1 Laughter is noble and profit- 
able ; but not that of the madman when he sets the house on 
fire, or that of the fool who goes to wedding and funeral with 
the same mindless grin. Its office is to prune the excrescences 
that will adhere to the best of human things, to prevent stupid 
ity, pretension, or weak enthusiasm, from attaching their dis- 
torting or encumbering insignia to any form of truth. But it 
becomes at once of malign influence, if its attacks menace the 
truth itself — if, in cutting away excess of foliage, it draws the 
vital sap from the tree — if, in curing the squint, it cuts out the 
eye. Sound satire should clear from all stains the statue of 
truth ; but it should make men love to gaze on that statue the 
more. And, since satire is of prevailing influence, since it acts 
upon the mind with a more subtle insinuation, and often exerts 
a greater power of unconscious mental modification even than 
argument, it is of serious importance that this fact be constantly 
borne in mind. 

Now, we do think that in the caricatures we have had of 
philanthropy, this fundamental law has been infringed. There 
has been a flital want of all discrimination of the true from the 
false ; qualities radically and perennially holy, human in the 



68 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

noblest sense, and dignifying humanity, have been confounded 
■with their morbid excess, or left to appear altogether absurd 
and ignoble. One or two words will make this plain. 

There are three circles in which, in his life on earth, and the 
discharge of his earthly duties, a man may act. The first is 
that of self : one must always, by duty and necessity, do more 
for himself, or in connection with himself, than for any one 
else. The second is that of family and friends, of all those 
who have a claim on one by blood or friendship : within this 
circle a man must perform certain duties, or he meets univer- 
sal reprobation and contempt. Tlie third is that of humanity 
in general. We shall not insult our readers by proving to 
them that this is truly and properly a sphere of human duty ; 
although there are not wanting writings in our day whose ten- 
dency seems to indicate it as an insult to suppose one to doubt 
the reverse : we shall not endeavor to eliminate the fact, which 
used to be considered as good as settled, that a man is by 
nature united in mysterious but ennobling bonds with every 
other man, and that it is not one of the characteristics of a 
high state of humanity, that it be separated into families and 
coteries, each attending to its own affairs, like so many families 
of wolves in the pine forest ; we shall presume our readers to 
agree that severance, disunion, isolation, selfishness, are symp- 
toms of disease in the human race, and that the evolution of 
the ages, if it tends to any consummation whatever, must tend 
to their termination. Not only, however, is this sphere noble; 
we fearlessly assert, still without deeming proof necessary, 
that it is this third sphere where, save in rare instances, noble- 
ness as such has existence. A man who performs well his 
duties to himself, who has no higher object than that he may 
be undisturbed and happy, we shall not call noble. In the 
second circle ■« e find many of the loveliest spectacles that our 



FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 69 

earth can show : the affection of brothers and of sisters, the 
self-sacrificing nobleness of friendship, the sacred beauty of a 
mother's love. But, leaving the question of friendship (which, 
indeed, holds, in its pure form, of the high and the immortal), 
we can not hesitate to place domestic feelings and spectacles, 
as such, among the natural productions of our planet; the 
loveliest perhaps we have to show, but of a beauty precisely 
analogous to that of the rose and the fountain, and essentially 
pertaining to time. By neglecting family duties, one becomes 
less than a man ; by performing them never so well, he comes 
not to merit applause. Distinctive nobleness commences in 
the third circle. It is when one rises above self and family, 
and looks abroad on the family of mankind, that he takes the 
attitude which in a man is essentially great: when he no 
longer feels around him the little necessities which compel, or 
the little pleasures which allure, and yet is able to contemplate 
men as a great brotherhood of immortals^ with a gaze analo- 
gous to that of Him in whose image he is made ; when he 
passes beyond what he shares with the lower orders of crea- 
tion, and soars to those regions where, as an intelligent, God- 
knowing creature, he may sit among the angels ; when he can 
look on the world through the light of eternity ; then it is that 
he does what it is the distinctive privilege and nobleness of 
man on this earth to do, what marks him as animated by those 
emotions to which, under God, humanity owes all it has 
achieved in time. All this is so plain, and so absolutely cer- 
tain, that statement embraces proof. 

What excuse, then, could be plead for a satire which endan- 
gered this peculiar nobleness of humanity, and perpetually 
read to man the lesson that he should mind himself, or, at 
most, his family, or, at very most, some interesting family 
which he fancied, much as he might rabbits or pigeons 1 A 



10 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

very superfluous lesson, to be sure ! For one man or womai- 
who neglects self or family from actual desire to promote the 
welfare of the human race, ten thousand, at the very least, 
neglect the latter for the former. Human indolence and selt 
ishness require no aid from satire to make men ever sink 
back into their own little circles, into their own little hearts ! 
Go out to your lawn in the evening after a shower, w^hen the 
earthworms are looking out, and commence to lecture them 
on the paramount importance of home duties : how it is proper 
to keep their holes tidy, and attend to the respectable up- 
bringing of their children ; how they have duties enough at 
their own doors, and it can not be too earnestly enforced on 
them that they ought not to look much toward the stars, just 
beginning to come out, and so very far away : but spare your 
sweet breath, and abandon the quite superfluous task of bid- 
ding men cultivate selfishness, and withdraw their eyes from 
looking in love toward the ends of the earth. Holy and 
beautiful are home duties, and home delights ; these may no- 
wise be neglected or scorned : but God did not kindle the 
smile of the winter hearth, or the warmer smile of the true 
wife ; God did not fill home with the musical voices of chil- 
dren, and the thousand " hopes, and fears that kindle hope, an 
undistinguishable throng," that these should be his all to a 
man, that no voice should reach him from the outer world. 
These are a solace after his work, these are rewards of his 
toil, but these can never furnish him the tasks that mark him 
distinctively as a man. It is when we widen our sphere of 
vision and of love — a sphere which will go on widening to 
eternity, and not when we contract it — that we become noble 
and man-like. 

We turn now to our cotemporary satire. Do we not 
meet, on all hands, with forms of ridicule — with quiet sneers. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 71 

with rude horse-laughter, with elaborate figures, of high broad 
brows, and breasts calm and cold as marble, and with sign- 
painter daubs, that are human only in bearing human names, 
but otherwise as dead as spoiled canvas — all meant to raise 
the laugh against a philanthropy that would look abroad 1 We 
desire no stop to be put to the laughter ; only let care be 
taken, lest while we laugh, our unconscious hearts are robbed 
of the purest spark of celestial fire lingering within. When 
we look at the delicate and living lines in the stately statue 
of a St. John, or at the mechanic movements, utterly re- 
moved from all possibility of sympathy, and to be condemned 
as abortive and inconceivable, by every canon of mere criti- 
cism, in a Mrs. Jellyby, let us beware lest we recoil too 
strongly from the finely and ahnost soundly satirized excess 
of the one, and from the hideous and unmitigated atrocity of 
the other, into what is, in the former, however painted, after 
all but human passion, or into what is offered as the right 
morality instead of the other, a silly and simpering good-na- 
ture, that never looks beyond its own little ring, and such 
objects as can look well, and draw mawkish tears in the pages 
of a novel. Let it be remembered, also, that whatever may 
be the case with morbid idiosyncrasy, it is in general the heat 
which warms most that casts its warming influence farthest ; 
the man who loves all men, will have love to embrace his 
neighborhood. The cottages of Cardington did not suffer 
because Howard was visiting the sick-beds on the shores of 
the Bosphorus. 

These words can not be considered uncalled for. Many, we 
fear, when their hearts, in the first ardor of youth, were begin- 
ning to expand with holy desires, that told of their brother- 
hood or sisterhood with earth's nobles and standard-bearers, 
have felt them contract again to the mere everyday feelings 



Y2 FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 

of home and neigliborhood, under the influence of such satire 
as we have been here indicating ; satire which would laugh at 
Plato as he trod, afar from men, the lone mountains of thought. 
which would keep David ever at the sheepfold, and John ever 
at the net. We turn now from this view of the subject. 

Philanthropy, we have said, has been attacked by Mr. Car- 
lyle. It has been attacked with weapons of argument, and 
with those of fiercest scorn, declared " a phosphorescence and 
unclean," and rejected from among the agencies to be regarded 
with hope by those who desire the common weal. We con- 
sider him to have erred ; but, well assured as we are that he 
loves men as only a mighty man can love, we deem any thing 
he may say on the subject worthy of attention, and we con- 
trovert his opinions ^vith deliberation and care. By consider- 
ing the case, too, in the precise light in which he views it, we 
come directly and conveniently to the heart of the whole ques- 
tion, to the determination of the relation borne by philanthropy 
to justice. This relation we shall endeavor to define with what 
we can attain of scientific accuracy. 

With very much of what Mr. Carlyle says on the subject 
of the treatment of criminals, we perfectly agree ; much, in- 
deed, which he alleges can, we think, be shown to be correct 
and consistent, only when interpreted in accordance with our 
theory. But the difference between us is decided. Our view 
of the matter leads us to what seems a satisfactory defense of 
that philanthropy which Mr. Carlyle execrates ; and when we 
discover his positive conception of the origin of human law 
we can deliberately and decisively affirm our belief of its in- 
correctness. We plainly assert that every man who is pun- 
ished by any constituted authority on this earth, who is put to 
death, or who is fined sixpence, can be so treated, reasonably 
and rightfully, solely because of the " effects," too varied to be 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 73 

noted for the present, of his actions on his fellows and their 
prospects. Mr. Carlyle has these words : — " Example, effects 
upon the public mind, effects upon this and upon that — all this 
is mere appendage and accident." We deliberately think that, 
to constitute revenge, the true theory of justice between man 
and man, the human being must be at once an atheist and a 
savage, Mr. Carlyle speaks thus : — " Revenge, my friends ! — 
revenge, and the natural hatred of scoundrels, and the ineradi- 
cable tendency to revancher one's-self upon them, and pay them 
what they have merited ; this is for evermore intrinsically a 
correct, and even a divine feeling in the mind of every man." 
And again, after one of his own burning metaphoric passages, 
in which a man, in the fury of passion, is represented as rea- 
sonably slaying another: — "My humane friends, I perceive 
this same sacred glow of divine wrath, or authentic monition 
at first-hand from God himself, to be the foundation for all 
criminal law," &;c. We can no longer doubt that Mr. Car- 
lyle's theory of law is that of revenge, and this we proceed to 
question. Let no one imagine, while we do so, that we im- 
pute to him all which may be logically extorted from his 
premises. 

The explicative word of Mr. Carlyle's whole system of be- 
lief is " hero-worship :" the immense debt we nationally owe 
him, and the unsoundness which may, we think, be shown to 
characterize very much of what he has written, are alike trace- 
able to his view of the individual man, and the relation he 
bears to his fellows. With his views here, his theory of hu- 
man law accords, in perfect philosophic consistency. We 
must, therefore, subject to an examination what we understand 
him to mean by " hero-worship." And we are the more will- 
ing to do so at this early stage of our progress, because we 
deem a conclusive exhibition of inaccuracy in his idea of man 

4 



74 FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 

sufficient to overthrow all, or almost all, the errors which we 
shall have to combat in these pages. 

Mr. Carlyle cares little for metaphysical supports for his 
opinions ; he has long listened to the great voices of life and 
history ; but we think his early works afford us the philosophic 
explanation of his doctrine of hero-worship. On a pantheistic 
scheme of things, it seems unassaila-ble. God being all, and 
all being God, and a great man being the highest visible mani- 
festation, and as it were concentration of the universal divine 
essence, it is right to pay to the latter the homage of an un- 
bounded admiration, to render him the only kind of worship 
possible to men. 

But we mean not to assail Mr. Carlyle from this point : we 
likewise turn to the voice of history and the heart. We find 
him tracing all worship to admiration and reverence for great 
men ; we find him asserting that the limits are not to be fixed 
for the veneration with which to regard true heroism in a man. 
We thuik the very word " hero-worship" utterly inadmissible 
under any interpretation ; we assert that no religion ever had 
its origin in the admiration of men. Such the point in dis- 
pute ; we turn to history. 

Two great classes may be distinguished among the leaders 
of mankind : those who have exercised their influence by power 
not moral, and those who made an appeal to the moral nature 
of man. We contend not for hair-breadth distinctions, we 
point out a difference which one glance along the centuries 
will show to be real and broad. By the first class, we mean 
such men as Napoleon, Caesar, and Alexander ; by the second, 
such men as Mohammed, Zoroaster, and Moses. The former 
were, viewed as we now regard them, mere embodiments of 
force ; their soldiers trusted and followed them, because armies 
were in their hands as thunderbolts. The captain of banditti, 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 75 

whose eye sees farther, and whose arm smites more power- 
fully, than those of his followers, exercises an influence in kind 
precisely similar. Any thing analogous to worship is foreign 
to every such case ; a fact rendered palpable and undeniable 
by the simple reflection, that there is no feeling of an infinite 
respect, as due to what is infinite, in these or the like instances. 
A supple-kneed Greek might have knelt to Alexander, "if 
Alexander wished," but no proclamations could make a Greek 
believe that Alexander could lay his hand on the lightning, or 
impart life to an insect. There is, however, another class of 
great men, with whose influence on their fellows worship has 
been ever and intimately connected : this we have represented 
by Mohammed, Zoroaster, and Moses. Here, then, the point at 
issue comes directly before us. • Worship did originate in each 
of these cases. Whence did it arise % Mark the men in their 
work, and listen to their words. Mohammed arose and said, 
"Ye have been worshiping dumb idols, that are no gods: 
look up to Allah ; there is no god but Allah !" His words were 
not in vain. Zoroaster arose and said, " Ye have wandered 
from the truth which your fathers knew and followed ; I bring 
you it back fresh from the fountains of heaven." Men gave 
ear to him also. Moses came to the children of Israel, and 
said, " I AM hath sent me unto you." They heard the word, 
and followed him ; through the cloven surges, into the howling 
wilderness, whithersoever he listed. Whom did men obey 
and worship in each of these cases 1 Did they worship Mo 
hammed, when he pointed his finger up to Allah ? Did they 
obey the commandments of Moses, when he gave them the 
tables where God's hand had traced words under the canopy 
of cloud and fire "? Surely, we may say with plainness and 
certainty. No. It was ever the Sender that was worshiped, not 
the sent ; it was the belief in his alliance with an exterior, an 



*/ 



76 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

infinite power which won him his influence. He has brought 
us fire from heaven ! Such, in all ages, has been the cry of 
men, as they looked, their eyes radiant with joy and thankful- 
ness, on the priest or prophet, and ranged themselves under 
his guidance. The crown and scepter which men have most 
highly honored, and most loyally obeyed, have always been 
believed to have come down from heaven ; men have not wor- 
shiped the spirit of a man, or the breath in his nostrils, but 
the Spirit to whom he turned them. We suppose the rudest 
Polynesian islander regards with profounder veneration the 
black, unchiseled, eyeless idol to which he bows down, than 
the wisest and mightiest chieftain he knows : the one holds of 
the unseen and the infinite, the other he can look upon, and 
examine, and compass in his thought ; to the one he may look 
in the day of battle, of the other he will think in the shadow 
of the thunder-cloud; the one he will respect and obey, the 
other alone will he worship. Go into the portrait-gallery of 
the Venetians, and mark there the " victorious Doges painted 
neither in the toil of battle nor the triumph of return, nor set 
forth with crowns and curtains of state, but kneeling always 
crownless, and returning thanks to God for his help, or as 
priests interceding for the nation in its affliction." That spec- 
tacle illustrates well the relative regards of men toward their 
greatest, and toward their God. 

But we think we hear some one indignantly exclaim, Why, 
in the first place, all this is the extreme of triteness ; and, in 
the second, Mr. Carlyle, by his doctrine of hero-worship, 
means really nothing more. We claim no great originality 
in this matter, and certainly the truth for which we contend, 
whatever it wants, is clothed in the majesty of age ; we do 
not suppose even, so strictly in accordance with human in- 
stinct do we deem it, that it sounded very strangely in the 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 11 

ears of men, when Moses, bidding them turn from those 
whose "breath was in their nostrils," was commissioned to 
write it down, an eternal truth for eternal remembrance, in 
the Book of Deuteronomy. But, however this may be, and 
even though our expression of the truth might be sanctioned 
by Mr. Carlyle, we are absolutely assured that it is enough to 
reverse his whole theor}^ of human affairs. We find it per- 
fectly sufficient to show that the term hero-worship is an ab- 
surdity, or worse ; to indicate the true significance of those 
phenomena of universal history which Mr. Carlyle has cate- 
gorized under that term ; and at least to lead to the over- 
throw of his theory that law originates in revenge. It were 
difficult to compute the practical importance of the truths to 
which, under the name of her'o-worship, he has directed our 
attention ; but we must remember the true and pregnant re- 
mark of Mackintosh, that, in the construction of theory, par- 
tial truth is equivalent to error ; and while we would not 
lose one grain of the real gold Mr. Carlyle has brought to 
the treasuries of the world, we would assign to all its own 
precise place, and no other. We grant that men have hon- 
ored men ; we grant that, in every department of human en- 
deavor, the point to be aimed at, for health, prosperity, and 
advancement, is to obtain qualified men. But, when Mr. Car- 
lyle associates this fact with worship, we at once declare him 
to have missed an all-important distinction, which reveals the 
highest lessons on what he names hero-worship. This dis- 
tinction is, we grant, very simple. If a city is surrounded by 
armed squadrons and a line of circumvallation, if the towns- 
men are in terror that no quarter will be given them, but yet, 
because of a scorching thirst which threatens to kill them by 
slow torment, are proceeding to open their gates, if then sud- 
denly one of their number discovers, in a spot hitherto un- 



'78 F I R S T P R I N C I P L E S . 

thought of, a well of cool and abundant water ; if his fellow- 
citizens crowd around him, and grasp his hand, and look on 
him with tears of joy — what shall we see in the spectacle 1 
Eespect for him, or delight at the discovery of the fountain ? 
Entirely the latter. When a man looking heavenward, cries 
out, I see heaven opened, and the light streams forth — lift up 
your eyes, and see it for yourselves ; when men hear, and 
believe, and bestir themselves, and exclaim. It is even so: 
we see the light, we feel ourselves being drawn nearer to it, 
and mayest thou be blessed for showing it to us — what shall 
we see in the spectacle ? Shall we regard it as a testimony 
of man to man, or of man to God ? Certainly as the latter. 
We look with Mr. Carlyle along human history ; we see men 
paying the highest honor to their Mohammeds and Zoroasters ; 
we see the character of whole epochs molded by this honor; 
we see nations gathering round these, and willing, one would 
say, to cement for them thrones in their hearts' blood ; and 
from the whole we learn, not the divinity of man, but the 
fact that the deep human instinct has in all ages looked for a 
God. The louder the shouts arise of what Mr. Carlyle trails 
hero-worship, the more definitely and decisively will they pro- 
claim to us that hero-worship, in any permissible or definable 
sense, is contradicted by the united voice of humanity. The 
two highest inferences to be drawn from all the great phenom- 
ena so magnificently illustrated by Mr. Carlyle under that 
name, seem to us to be these two : 

I. In the breast of the human race is a belief in an Infinite 
Being. 

II. There has been perennially in the heart of man an in- 
tense desire to reach a nearer knowledge of God, and a closer 
intimacy with Him — a sublime and inextinguishable yearning 
toward a divine Father. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 79 

The first of these propositions is one of nature's strongest 
arguments for a Deity ; the s-econd is perhaps the strongest, 
for the fact that the Deity is such a conscious and personal 
existence as can hold communication with reasoning minds. 
The first goes to establish monotheism ; the second sends a 
death-stab to the heart of pantheism. 

We find ourselves led, then, by the path trodden by Mr. 
Carlyle, to the throne where God sits, King of the universe. 
We shall endeavor to eliminate a theory of law in consistence 
with this great truth. If the hero is to be worshiped as a 
god, the scoundrel is to be hated as a devil ; the revenge 
theory may then be defended : but the fact may be different, 
if there never was any such thing as strict worship of 
heroes — if hero and scoundrel- are the subjects of one living 
God. 

We desire to make no show of metaphysics here : we write 
with a practical purpose, and in a popular form ; and, there- 
fore rest all on an appeal to men as they are represented in 
history, and as they feel in their hearts. But there is one ar- 
gument of perhaps a somewhat metaphysical nature, which is 
extremely simple, and seems to bear very strongly against 
the theory of revenge ; it we adduce in the outset It pro- 
ceeds on the hypothesis that there is an intelligent and al- 
mighty Governor of the universe. We introduce it by a 
well-known quotation : — 

"Alas! alas! 
Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once , 
And He that might the vantage best have took 
Found cut the remedy : How would you be, 
If He, which is the top of judgment, should 
But judge you as you are ? 0, think on that ; 
And mercy then will breathe within your lips, 
Like man new made." 



80 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

We can not consider this a mere echo of popular sentiment 
on the part of Shakspeare : we suspect these words came from 
depths in the greatest merely human heart that ever beat ; we 
think we see in them one of those thoughts that pierce farthest 
into eternity. When thinking or speaking of the Infinite Being, 
we can not proceed by calculation of degrees : absolute purity 
is stained by a mote as certainly as by a whole atmosphere of 
hell's darkness. If it is the eternal law of justice that the rea- 
sonable being affected with sin be hated, we can not go about 
to say, so much will be hated, so much will be tolerated, and 
so on. Now, Mr. Carlyle will certainly not deny that sin ad- 
heres to the whole human race : set on a ground of perfect 
light, he will allow our species, as a whole, to look black. He 
sees a brother man commit some atrocious crime : with what 
he calls a glow of divine wrath, he slays him. It being a 
divine emotion to hate that being because affected with sin, it 
must be also divine, in one of absolute holiness, to hate and 
exterminate every creature so affected, even by the smallest 
speck that infinite light can reveal. If this is so, how is it that 
the human race exists ? How is it that God did not lift His 
foot in anger, and crush our planet into annihilation as a loath- 
some worm staining the azure of immensity ? Really there 
is no answer : if hatred is the highest and holiest emotion with 
which a man can regard a fellow-creature affected with sin, if 
this fact is the real foundation of justice, and if an infraction 
of justice here is an infraction of essential right, there can not 
be conceived a reason, we might say a possibility, that a sinful 
species could subsist in God's world. And is there a living 
man, or has there ever been a man, who could deliberately 
consider that his distance from the purity of the Infinitely Holy 
.vas less than the distance of his most sinful brother from him ? 
Is there any of the sons of men who could deliberately chal- 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 81 

lenge lik Maker to cast a stone at him '? If such there be, let 
him hold to the theory that hatred and revenge are the emo- 
tions with which God regards the sinner ; if there is none such, 
that theory chains the noblest human soul that ever existed on 
the eternal rock of despair. 

This preliminary consideration leads us to a distinction 
which lies at the basis of all that is to follow — that, namely, 
between moral evil and the soul it pollutes. This distinction 
Mr. Carlyle overlooks or ignores, yet on it all depends. God, 
we most certainly hold, does eternally and infinitely hate sin, 
and no bounds are to be placed to the hatred with which it is 
right for men to regard it ; but precisely as " hero-worship" 
was found not to indicate infinite love and honor as due to 
men, but as directed toward the fountain of light, so the efforts 
men have made to exterminate the excessively wicked from 
among them, indicate hatred of their brethren only in a sec- 
ondary and temporary sense, and point chiefly to the abyss of 
blackness which their iniquity reveals. The whole moral uni- 
verse seems to us to be whelmed in a confusion as of return- 
ing chaos, if this distinction is not rigidly adhered to. 

We can not be required to prove the possibility of drawing 
this great distinction, or its reality when drawn ; and, con- 
vinced that we can appeal to the instincts of men, we inten- 
tionally fortify it by no metaphysical arguments. Every man 
could understand and sympathize with Coleridge, when he said 
he would tolerate men, but for principles he would have no 
toleration. The present Christian sees no mystery in that 
passage where God is asserted to have no pleasure in the death 
of the sinner, although the whole Bible testifies His exter- 
minating abhorrence of sin. And have not men ever borne 
witness to an instinctive feeling of this distinction 1 Bad as 
the world is, there perhaps was never a scaffold erected, and a 
4* 



82 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

man put to death upon it, for whom, whatever his crime, cer- 
tain eyes in the crowd were not filled with the dew of pity. 
Have not some nations treated the condemned, previously to 
their execution, with condoling kindness 1 Or what find we in 
that spectacle exhibited in Paris, on the autumn evening in 
1792, which Mr. Carlyle has painted for us as with the brush 
of Michael Angelo? The Septembriseurs, maddened with 
rage, their arms to the elbow clotted with gore, their whole 
aspect that of unchained demons, clasped to their breasts, with 
the audible weeping of irrepressible joy, any one among the 
prisoners who was pronounced guiltless and snatched from the 
jaws of death. Even they witnessed to the fact that it is a 
stern work for man to be the executioner of man. It is the 
mark of the evil one perceived on a fellow-creature that is 
hated, not that creature himself Would to God, men say 
from their inmost hearts, we could part this evil from you ; 
but we can not, and we must expel it from the midst of us ; 
you must go with it. The tainted spot must be cut out ; but 
while the knife is being whetted, the tear is being shed. Mr. 
Carlyle acknowledges this general fact, but, if well pondered, 
we think it goes iar to invalidate his theory. To account for 
it, without recognizing the distinction we have stated, will be 
found difficult. The indulgence of every desire and propen- 
sity is, by a recognized psychological law, associated with a 
pleasurable sensation. When a man kills another in the fury 
of revenge, he assuredly experiences a momentary relief and 
gratification. By our distinction, all becomes consistent ; the 
passion is left in the enjoyment of its own pleasure; the pain 
arises from another source yet to be seen. 

Let it not be supposed that we allege that revenge performs 
no function in human affairs ; we do believe it to have a func- 
tion. This we shall presently endeavor to indicate ; but we 



?IRST PRINCIPLES. 83 

now concede that, even in the precise mode in which Mr. Car- 
lyle pictures its exercise, it may, in rare cases, come legiti- 
mately into action. 

"The forked weapon of the skies can send i 

Illumination into deep, dark holds, 
Which the mild sunbeam hath not power to pierce." 

Where the calm voice of law can not be heard, or its hand 
can not strike, then revenge may start forth to assert humanity 
and justice. 

Keeping steadily in view the distinction between the sinner 
and his sin, we proceed to exhibit briefly what we deem the 
real origin and function of human law. 

We find man, in all ages and circumstances, present two 
great aspects : that of the individual ; and that of the civis, 
or member of society. We must say one or two words of 
each. 

It is not a mere theological dogma that man is king of this 
lower world — that his relation to his fellows is different from 
that he bears to the inferior animals. Is there not a certain 
mystical sacredness attaching to the life of a man ? Is there 
any degree of idiocy or insanity which will turn aside that 
flaming sword with which conscience pursues the murderer ? 
In the remotest desert, in the depth of the sequestered wood, 
why is it that he who deliberately slays his fellow feels that 
he is not unseen 1 — that, though no human power will ever 
reach him, there is a tribunal before which he will appear — 
One to whom his brother's blood can cry even from the 
ground 1 Is it not because there is a sense in which all men 
are equal — their diflerences relative, their equality essential ? 
.And what but this can we understand by the inherent majesty 
imputed by sages and poets to men 1 What but this renders 



84 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

it a glorious thing, however slender my capacities, that I have 
the gift of a human soul? Not onlv is it that the grandeurs 
and harmonies of nature are disposed for the delight and ex- 
altation of all, not only that 

" The sun is fix'd. 
And the infinite magnificence of Heaven 
Fix'd, "within reach of every human eye ; 
The sleepless ocean murmurs for all ears ; 
The vernal field infuses fresh delight 
Into all hearts :" 

from which sublime truth a metaphysical as well as a poetical 
argument for essential human brotherhood might perhaps be 
drawn : the very fact that the human eye has been opened, as 
no other being's on earth has been, to see the face of the one 
God, seems a sufficient proof that there remains for man, from 
every power on earth, an ultimate appeal. The destinies of 
men are bounded, not by time, but by eternity ; the human 
soul is a denizen, not alone of earth, but of the universe : 

" God's image, sister of the seraphim," 

if indeed the seraphim can claim a glory equal to that of the 
soul of man, will always assert a claim to the citizenship of 
Heaven, and a power of appeal to the judgment of God. The 
right by which any earthly power can judge and punish man 
must be delegated. 

By turning thus for a moment upon man the light of eternity, 
we find pertaining to him an essential equality ; we think, too, 
we here discover the source of that inextinguishable and resist- 
less passion for freedom which has ever distinguished him in 
time. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 85 

Neither is it merely a theological dogma that the human, 
race is in a state of imperfection, and of effort toward some 
higher condition. It is a historical fact. Call it what you will, 
account for it as you may, the human race, in its hiistory in 
time, has been marked by one grand characteristic, unique in 
this world. That characteristic is a visible effort toward some 
development — a progress, or aim at progress. Our species has ^ 
not the aspect of one who has finished his journey, but of one 
still proceeding in it ; not of one who has cultivated his field, 
and can sit down to enjoy it, but of one w^ho still sees it untilled 
and encumbered with rocks; humanity has always shown a. 
brow darkened with care and dissatisfaction, an eye fixed on 
the distance, a staff in the hand. We need not ask whither it 
is bound ; but, beyond question,- it has ever been going ; never 
could it lay itself down to sleep ; never could it build itself an 
eternal city ; ever its most heroic aspect has been displayed 
when it aroused itself, and set out anew on its march. But the 
deepest thinkers have recognised that, along with this character- 
istic of progress, the human species is distinguished by that 
also of a remarkable and preeminent unity. You cannot in- 
dividualise man so far as to separate him from his species ; in 
the wolf child of India, in the maniac of solitary confinement, 
you see what man is when separated from man. In the unity of 
the species, or its irresistible tendency toward unity, originated 
society. Society arrogated to itself a power which no indi- 
vidual man can claim, the power to touch the human life ; this 
power, we believe, was conferred on it by God, and the form 
in which he revealed to man that it belonged to him was, the 
necessity, stern and painful indeed, by which he was driven to 
exercise it. 

The perfect development of human unity, the attainment of 
all that man can do or become in a civil capacity, is the aim of 



86 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

civilization. The macliinery of human civilization is vast and 
various ; one of its principal parts is — law. 

Where, then, precisely are we to look for the origin of law ? 
Surely to the relation between the two entities — the individual, 

"^ and the society. And if we can find any reason why the so- 
ciety should originate law, we shall probably have discovered 
that of which we are in quest. We have not far to look ; we 
find it by a glance at individual passion. At what time law 
commenced we inquire not — whether its origin was in any re- 
spect supernatural or not, is of no moment at present ; but 
certainly it was when human passions were seen tearing the 
weak and defenseless, when individual greed, individual lust, 
individual hate, and, most cruel and perilous of all, individual 
revenge, ranged like beasts of the forest amid a flock, that Law 
unbared her " beautiful bold brow," and bade them all cower 
beneath the eye of reason. Human law arose from no human 

4 passion, but from the necessity discerned by men, if they were 
to abide longer in this world, to have some voice above human 
passion, with power to control it. 

That mighty instinct in the human heart which has ever 

J spurned control by an individual brother, required absolutely 
to be commanded by a power not individual, which could dare 
to compel submission. In the very idea of law we find the re- 
straint of the individual : the very object of law is the counter- 
action of passion ; if any two ideas are precisely antithetic, 
they are these two, law and passion. 

Let us, leaving the others, look for a moment at this particu- 
lar passion of revenge. We put these questions regarding it, — 
When was it ever felt, save for personal wrongs, to such an ex- 
tent that it could supply the place of an independent, disin- 
terested voice "? When was it felt for sin, either against God 
or man, with half the intensity with which it has burned for 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 8t 

the most insignificant personal injury *? When was its power 
ever permitted to remain comparatively unchecked without 
producing effects of excess which were the mockery of justice 1 
Eevenge was in the eye of Cain when he struck down Abel ; 
revenge was the Themis of the deadly feud demanding the un- 
intermittent stream of blood from generation to generation for 
the accident or the mistake ; but when revenge ever spoke, save 
perhaps in the convulsions and spasms of national life, with the 
voice of reason, we know not. Of all the passions upon which 
Law cast her quelling eye, blind, selfish, murderous revenge 
was perhaps the most turbulent and unreasonable. 

We are led to this conclusion : — That man, feeling in his 
bosom a freedom which, like the very breath of the Almighty, ^ 
seemed part of his essential existence, yet saw himself so en- 
cumbered by manifold imperfections, so preyed upon by indi- 
vidual passions, that, in his progress onward, he was compelled, 
unconsciously or by a voice from heaven, to originate the thing 
society, and to establish a power which, personating the com- 
munity, should visit with punishment crimes committed against 
it : this last power was law. We have said that it had its 
root in expediency ; but the sense in which this holds good is 
important. It was expedient with reference to eternity : as 
mankind navigated the stream of time, a fiital mutiny broke 
out, and the expedient of law became necessary to make exist- 
ence possible ; in a perfect state of humanity it were impos- 
sible; it will vanish when society vanishes, in the restored 
state of man. But it may, nevertheless, appeal to eternal laws ; 
nay, it may be specially said to rise over the clamor of indi- '^ 
vidual and temporal interests, and endeavor to catch the eter- 
nal accents of justice ; its commission is temporal, its code may 
be eternal. 

Law is the antithesis of individualism. But, if we did seek / 



8S FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

its analogue in the individual mind, we should not look for it 
in revenge : we should find it in the serene pause of reason, 
when all noises from without are excluded, and the raving pas- 
sions are stilled within, and the soul asks counsel of pure truth 
and perfect justice. 

Does not the universal opinion of mankind, in its uncon- 
scious expression, during all ages, support us in our view of 
law 1 If not, whence is it that Justice has ever been figured as 
of calm, passionless countenance; no cloud of revenge, no 
gleam of pity on her brow, and holding in her hand the well- 
poised balance ? Law does not regard man as such ; it regards 
them as retarding forces which hinder men in their march 
through time, and, as such, visits them with punishment. 
Hatred, love, revenge, pity, every emotion which has reference 
to the living, sentient being, is foreign to that iron brow ; there 
must be no quivering in the hand which holds that even 
balance. 

The foregoing proof was necessary to enable us to exhibit 
the soundness of philanthropy, as brought forward into more 
prominent operation among the agencies of human civilization, 
than it had hitherto been, by John Howard. 

Look again at that calm image of Justice, lifting her serene 
brow into the still azure. We think that, with strict philo- 
sophic truth, a poetic eye, regarding that figure in time, may 
have seen that it has ever been accompanied by two other 
figures. On the one hand was Revenge, with instruments of 
torture, and an eye where blended the fury of hell and the 
hunger of the grave. She has ever called for more victims 
and more pain. That she has not cried in vain, let the groans 
that have come from earth's racks and wheels, earth's crosses 
and furnaces, bear sad witness. On the other hand was Love, 
pleading ever against Revenge, and endeavoring to draw an 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 89 

iron tear from the eye of Justice. Both these figures are for- 
eign to the idea of law. Eevenge looks from the fault to the 
individual, and says, torture and kill him ; Love looks from the 
fault to the individual, and says, pity and save him ; Law re- 
gards the fault alone. 

We fully grant that revenge has thus a function in time. 
Love might conceivably become morbid, might degenerate 
into a weak sentimentalism, might cease to accept the stem 
necessity of not sparing the sin, whatever may be the feeling en- 
tertained for the sinner. And had it not been for the positive 
pleasure of revenge, perhaps the sorrow entailed upon men in 
the punishment of those among them who clog the wheels of 
progress, had caused its having never been proceeded with : so 
far, in strict psychological truth, does Mr. Carlyle err, when 
he speaks of the exercise of revenge being painful. Love may 
go farther than can be allowed it in the present condition of 
the human race, and then revenge may feel itself crushed and 
unduly outraged, and call out for a new fixing of that medium 
between extremes, which is all we can yet attempt. Nay, it 
is quite beyond our attention to deny that this may, in indi- 
vidual instances, have been the case in the philanthropic move- 
ment. 

Love and revenge, considered thus in their relation to jus- 
tice, are alike temporal. When men have re-attained their 
true, original, spiritual life, their work will have been com- 
pleted ; Justice will then for ever rule, and alone ; but no lon- 
ger over cowering, struggling, trembling creatures ; for, when 
we look up, the iron brow shall have become gold, and we 
shall know, by the fadeless smile on the lip, that to eternity 
Justice and Love are one. 

Now are we fairly at the point where we can decide upon 
the claims of philanthropy. Granting that love and revenge 



1^ 



90 FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 

are each and equally foreign to the idea of law, we ask this 
question : — In a state of progress, in a state of advancement 
from worse to better, shall we proceed toward the enlargement 
of the province of love, or to that of the province of revenge 1 
Surely we may answer, without hesitation, that the advance- 
ment must be in the direction of love, and that, more and 
more, revenge will be driven away, as men attain to higher 
and higher development. When all passions fade away, their 
function being performed, love will also pass away, but only to 
become one with justice. We shall not hang such a curtain 
of murky darkness over the future of humanity, as to say that 
it is not toward love, but toward hatred, not toward mercy, 
but revenge, that we are advancing. Surely, if there is one 
instinct in the human heart which is entwined with its essential 
life, and which wings its proudest aspirations ; if there is one 
universal faith written in the brightness which, even in its 
tears, the eye of humanity gathers as it looks toward the far 
distance; if there is one belief which preeminently stamps 
earth as the place of hope, it is this — that, despite volcanoes 
and thunder-storms, despite scaffolds and battle-fields, despite 
death and the grave, love is, by eternal nature and essence, 
holier than hate, and will ultimately prevail against it. What- 
ever their present mission, revenge and hatred are known by 
men to belong to a state of disease, to be in their nature, when 
between reasonable beings, not divine, but diabolic. Go to 
the poor Bedouin of the desert, and ask what is his idea of 
justice and of law. There, amid his burning wastes, where he 
clings on to the skirts of civilization, scarce able to count on 
his life for an hour to come, you find in full development the 
bare idea of force as what is to be feared, and obeyed, and 
worshiped. The foot that can crush him like a worm into the 
sand, the eye that will not relent for tears or groaning — these 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 91 

he honors. Is not this the first rude idea of humanity ? Must 
we still learn from the desert wanderer ? Surely, at some point 
in the revolution of the ages, the soothing, softening, mighty 
influences of kindness were to begin to make themselves more 
distinctly felt than in the old iron times. It is a universal 
principle that, strength being secured, the milder every gov- 
ernment is, the nearer does it approach to perfection : this 
holds good in the heart, the family, and the nation. And how- 
ever philanthropy may as yet struggle amid obstruction and 
obscuration, we shall hail it as a streak, coming beautifully, 
though as yet faintly and dubiously, over the mist-wreaths of 
morning, of that mild sunlight whose power will one day re- 
place that of the tempest. The times, we shall hope, had come 
for philanthropy, and Howard was sent to call it into visible 
form and working. And, methinks, even although such a 
dreadful thing has happened as that one or two fewer strokes 
have been inflicted on the writhing criminal, than fierce re- 
venge, or even Bedouin justice, might demand, it is better to 
have it so, than that we should go back to the days of racks 
and wheels, of human beings distracted with sorrow, and 
guiltless creatures dying of jail fever. But this consideration 
is not required. We calmly rest the cause of philanthropy 
on these simple truths : that there is a discernible and distinct 
office performed by pity in our present condition, relating to 
justice ; and that its function must go on expending if men 
advance. Philanthropy is a weapon from heaven's armory ; 
we trust the time has come when we can use it ; if not, the 
greater our shame, not the worse the weapon. 

Extremes are always easy ; this is as true as that they are 
always wrong. A maudlin, morbid pity, refusing the impera- 
tive conditions of our existence in time, is the one extreme ; 
for it we offer no defense — it we deem perfectly distinct 



92 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

from true Christian philanthropy: a savage, unsparing, exe- 
crating denunciation of pliilanthropy seems to us the other — 
an equally false, and still more easy extreme ; against it we 
here specially strive. The difficulty assuredly is, to discover 
what is really valuable m philanthropy, to separate it from 
dross, and to shape it into a tool for our work, or a weapon 
for our warfare. What little we have to propose for the ac- 
complishment of this, we shall declare hereafter. For the 
present, since it is of the idea of philanthropy and not of its 
developments we treat, we shall conclude with a word or two 
relating to the essential connection of the philanthropy we 
prize with Christianity, and what it gains from this connec- 
tion. 

We have hitherto spoken of love in its human aspect, and 
appealed merely to human reason and history. But it can in 
no quarter be deemed unimportant that an idea is approved 
by a religion, which, name it as you will, is the highest that 
ever appeared on earth, and has swayed more intellect than 
ever any other. Christianity sanctions and embodies philan- 
thropy. The angel that led the choir over the fields of Beth- 
lehem was named Love. Take away love from Christianity, 
and you have taken away its life : love, not alone to the just 
and the holy, but to the sinner ; to the pale Magdalene, to 
whom no one but the King of men and of angels will deign to 
speak, to the poor publican, and the hated leper, and the raving 
maniac. It was at the voice of Christianity that modem phi- 
lanthropy awoke, and it is in this alliance that we regard it 
with hope. Christianity gives us those fundamental truths of 
philanthropy, that sin can be hated and the sinner loved, and 
that love will be the end of all. Say not that this first is a 
filmy distinction, or that it will blunt the weapons and unnerve 
the arms that must in time carry on truceless war with evil. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 93 

If it is a cloud, it is as one of those interposed by kind super- 
nal powers between the breast of Greek or Trojan hero and 
the mortal stab : it alone shuts our hearts against hatred of 
our brothers. And think not the second charge valid ; all 
human history is against you. Men have always fought and 
toiled best when moved by impulses holding of the infinite. 
It is the banner painted on the clouds under which men will 
conquer ; it was when, amid the battle-dust around Antioch, or 
coming along the slopes of Olivet, the worn crusader caught 
the gleam of celestial helms advancing to his rescue, that he 
became irresistible. The ill done us by a poor brother is a 
paltry motive : who would not rather strain his sinews a little 
harder, have a few more hot drops on his own brow, than kill 
the poor creature whom we had got down ! We must have a 
motive, in our war with evil, that will be beyond the sounding 
and measuring of our own faculties. This Mr. Carlyle knows 
well ; but he finds it in boundless wrath against the individual 
caitiff; we, by looking beyond time altogether, in a necessity 
of nature, and the command of God. Sin is an infinite evil ; 
against it we can strive with unbounded indignation. To put 
it away from us, we must slay him who is fatally infected, and 
whose infection will spread : but not toward him are we neces- 
sitated to entertain any feeling but love ; the whole fervor of 
our hate is against that snake whose deadly venom has utterly 
tainted his blood. It is by some mighty distraction in the 
order of things, by some staining of the " white radiance of 
eternity," by some disturbance of the everlasting rest, that 
sin has extended its influence to reasoning human beings. One 
great effect of this is, that, in time, and by man, the distinction 
between the sin and the reasoning human being it affects can 
not be perfectly preserved. But the infinitude of God's peace 
will one day envelop the little stream of time, and hush all its 



94 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

frettings and foamings in the calm of its perfect light ; and the 
religion whose aim and end is the attainment of this higher 
rest by men, does most fitly and with a sublime prominence 
wear this distinction on its front. " Love thy neighbor as 
thyself," says Christianity : there is no exception. But does 
Christianity not bid us war against sin ? We suppose it is 
unnecessary to quote the whole Bible. 

Retaining, with Sandy Mackay, the ancient belief in a posit 
ive living spirit of evil, we believe also in sinless intelligences, 
superior, for the present at least, to men, and employed on 
bests of mercy by God. Wandering unseen among us in the 
performance of their ministries of love, they are untainted by 
the sin, and untouched by the sorrow of earth. Now, we can 
conceive no way in which they could have been secured from 
mere earthly sorrow, from the poignancy of sheer ignoble 
grief — that grief which is dependent for its origin on the state, 
and not the circumstances of the soul — save by their distinguish- 
ing between the sin and the sinner, and being thus wrapped up 
in an impenetrable garment of celestial love. Safe in this, they 
can gaze upon the wandering mortal, however black his iniquity, 
with eyes wherein every gleam of indignation, every dark 
speck of hatred, every scowl of revenge, is drowned in the 
softest dew. God has sent them as messengers to a world of 
sin, but they bear with them the atmosphere of heaven, for 
within them is the glow, around them is the music, of love. 
] And we affirm that man by Christianity is exalted to a privilege 
like theirs. Like them, he shares in the universal battle ; like 
them, he wars to the death with sin : but, if he is a Christian, 
he is like them dowered with an exemption from every emo- 
tion that would taint the atmosphere of his own mind. We 
think we have shown that all we now say is consistent with 
human instinct; but if nature only points to the distinction, if, 



FIRST PRINCIPLES. 95 

like a dumb animal, it merely by its pain indicates a want, 
Christianity brings out the truth in its clearness, and vindicates 
a superiority to nature. It is on the mount with Jesus, that 
we enter the company of heavenly creatures. 

And with full decision, while with earnest reverence, would 
we point to Christ Jesus himself as the perfect philanthropist. 
Let who will deny the compatibility of a Christian hatred 
of sin with a Christian love of the sinner ; let it appear to 
philosophers and to natural religionists chimerical or weak as 
it may ; the Christian can always respond by merely pointing 
to Him as He appeared on that day when He looked over 
Jerusalem. Was there infinite hatred for sin in those words 
of doom 1 Was there infinite love in those tears 1 And, to 
make an allusion to what we have not space to prove, let who 
will jeer at the man or the woman who goes into the penitent- 
iary, the prison, the condemned cell, with the Bible, to try to 
rescue for heaven those whom society must banish from earth : 
if nature calls that a vain or absurd task, Christianity speaks 
differently. To every objection — of hopelessness, of senti- 
mentalism, of enthusiasm — ^the Christian can simply answer, 
There was once a thief to whom the gospel was preached in the 
mortal agony, and that night he walked with the Preacher in 
Paradise. 



We proceed to mark, in the method we have proposed to 
ourselves in these pages, the emergence of Christian Philan- 
thropy in our era : our task takes the form of biograpy. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOWARD ; AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 

We feel ourselves enabled, and, for that reason, bound, to ex- 
press a conviction, that there is no fair and adequate, in one 
word, satisfactory, biography of Howard in the hands of his 
countrymen, no estimate of his character and work which can or 
ought to be final. Aiken's v/ork is mainly a lengthened mental 
analysis, by no means void of value, and written with clearness 
and spirit ; but it admits of doubt whether Howard was of that 
order of men, in whose case such analysis can be considered 
useful or admissible. Brown's life contains a true image of 
Howard, but it rests there in rude outline, too much as the 
statue lies in the half cut block ; the work wants unity, is fatally 
dull, and is not free from the generic taints of biography, ex- 
aggeration and daubing. Mr. Dickson's book is, in some re- 
spects, the best ; and yet, in some others, the worst we have 
seen on Howard. The account it gives of his journeys is 
spirited and clear, and no charge of dulness can be brought 
against its general style. Yet it may be pronounced, as a 
whole, and in one word, wrong. It is set on a false key. It is 
brisk, sparkling, continually pointed ; if it does not directly 
share the characteristics of either, it seems to belong to a de- 
batable region between flippancy and bombast ; in fatal meas- 
ure, it wants chasteness and repose. Now, we know of no man 



HOWARD; AND THE RISE OF PIIILAXTHKOPY. 97 

in whose delineation tliese general characteristics are so totally 
out of place, and these wants so plainly irreparable, as in that 
of Howard. The great attribute of his nature, the universal 
aspect of his life, was calmness : he ever reminds one of a 
solemn hymn, sung, with no instrumental accompaniment, with 
little musical power, but with the earnest melody of the heart, 
in an old Hebrew household. Mr. Dickson gives his readers 
a wrong idea of the man : more profoundly wrong than could 
have arisen from any single mistake (and such, of a serious 
nature, there are), for it results from the whole tone and man- 
ner of the work. A Madonna, in the pure color and somewhat 
rigid grace of Francia, stuck round with gum-flowers by a 
Belgian populace ; a Greek statue described by a young Ameri- 
can fine writer ; — such are the- anomalies suggested by this 
life of Howard. There were one or two memoirs published in 
magazines at the time of his death, but these are now quite un- 
known. On the whole we must declare, that the right estimate 
and proper representation of the founder of Modern Philan- 
thropy have still to be looked for. And at the present moment 
such are specially required. Since the publication of Mr. 
Carlyle's pamphlets, opinion regarding him has been, we think, 
of one of two sorts : either it is thought that his true place has 
at length been fixed, that Mr. Carlyle's sneers are reasonable ; 
or unmeasured and undistinguishing indignation has been felt 
against that wTiter, and the old rapturous applause of Howard 
has been prolonged. In neither view of the case can we rest. 
To submit that applause to a calm examination, and discover 
wherein, and how far, it is and has been just ; to estimate the 
power of Mr. Carlyle's attack, and determine in how far it 
settles the deserts of its subject ; and to offer a brief, yet es- 
sentially adequate representation of the life of Howard in its 
wholeness, has been our attempt in the following paragraphs. 

5 



98 HOWARD ; 

We are perfectly sensible that our effort has but partially 
succeeded ; we know too well how near to each other are the 
indispensable requisite, true repose, and the total failure, dul- 
ness : our hope is, that we have spoken truth, and truth which 
requires to be spoken. 

John Howard was born in London, or its vicinity, about the 
year 1727 ; the precise locality and the precise date have been 
matter of dispute. His mother, of whom we have no informa- 
tion, died in his infancy. His father was a dealer in upholstery 
wares in London, and realized a considerable fortune. We 
are somewhat astonished to hear that he had a character for 
parsimony. We are not, indeed, furnished with any instances 
of remarkable closeness or illiberality, and his conduct to his 
son affords no marks of such. That the allegation, however, 
had certain grounds in truth, we can not doubt ; and the cir- 
cumstance is not a little singular in the father of one, who must 
be allowed, whether with censure or applause, to have found, 
from the days of his boyhood, a keen delight in giving. But, 
whatever the nature or force of this foible, the character of the 
elder Howard was, on the whole, worthy and substantial. He 
was a man of quiet methodic habits, deeply imbued with re- 
ligious sentiment ; his views were Calvinistic, and he was a 
member of a denomination unconnected with the English es- 
tablishment — probably the Independent. He was specially 
characterized by a rigid observance of the Sabbath. We find in 
him, indeed, unmistakable traces of the devout earnestness of 
an earlier age ; we think that it admits of little doubt that his 
religion was a lingering ray of the light which burned so con- 
spicuously in England in the preceding century. While the 
bacchanal rout of the Eestoration made hideous the night of 
England's departed glory, there were a few, perhaps many, 
who retired unnoticed into hidden places, to nurse, on house-' 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTPIROPT. 99 

hold altars, the flame which seemed erewhile about to illumine 
the world ; and in the next century such could not have alto- 
gether died away. That deep godliness whose sacred influence, 
like a resting gleam of soft dewy light, was shed over the whole 
career of John Howard, accompanied him from his father's 
house. Were it not somewhat strange, if it proved to have 
been a dying ray of the old Puritanism which brightened into 
Modern Philanthropy ! 

The boy Howard made no figure in his classes. He was, 
beyond question, what is generally known as a dull boy. He 
never acquired a perfect grammatical knowledge, or a ready 
command, even of his native language. Yet he does appear, 
in his early years, to have given indications of a character dif- 
ferent from that of ordinary dull boys. His schoolfellows 
seem to have discerned him, despite his slowness, to possess 
qualities deserving honorable regard ; they saw that he was 
unobtrusive, self-respecting, unostentatiously but warmly gen- 
erous. Price, doubtless one of the quickest of boys, and 
Howard, slow as he was, were drawn toward each other at 
school, and formed a friendship broken only by death. He 
succeeded, also, and with no conscious effort, in inspiring his 
older friends and relatives with a sense of the general worth, 
the substantial, reliable value, of his character. He was known 
to be sedate, serious, discreet; his word could be depended 
upon, his sagacity was true ; above all, he was simple, quiet, 
modest. 

It being manifest that he had no vocation for letters, his fa- 
ther very sensibly removed him from school, and bound him 
apprentice to Messrs. Newnham & Shipley, grocers in the city 
of London. A premium of £700 was paid' with him : he was 
furnished with separate apartments, and a couple of saddle- 
horses. We find no mark of parsimony here. 



100 HOWARD ; 

In 1742, his father died, leaving him heir to considerable 
property, and seven thousand pounds in money. By the pro- 
visions of the will, he was not to enter on his inheritance ere 
reaching his twenty-fourth year. But his guardians permitted 
him at once to undertake the principal management of his af- 
fairs. As he was still a mere boy, seventeen or eighteen at 
most, this must be regarded as a decisive proof of the high es- 
timation in which he was held by those who had been in a 
position to form an opinion of his character. He speedily 
quitted the establishment in the city; his apprenticeship was 
never completed. 

Not long after his father's death, he traveled for some time 
on the Continent, and, on his return, went into lodgings at 
Stoke Newington. Here he continued for several years. His 
existence was quiet, even, in no way remarkable, broken only 
by visits to the west of England on account of his health. 
This last was quite unsettled. It is indeed to be borne in mind, 
in the contemplation of his whole career, that he had to sus- 
tain a life-long struggle with ill-health, that all the influences, 
to sour the temper, to close the heart, to dim the intellect, to 
enfeeble the will, which are included in that one word, bore 
perpetually upon Howard. His constitution was by no means 
sound, and had a strong determination toward consumption. 
In his unnoticed retirement at Stoke Newington, we can easily 
picture him ; his pale, tranquil countenance, marked, perhaps, 
with somewhat of the weary and oppressed look that comes of 
constant acquaintance with weakness and pain, but unclouded 
by any repining, and mildly lighted by modest self-respect, by 
inborn kindness, by deep, habitual piety. He derived some 
pleasure from a slight intermeddling with certain of the simplest 
parts of natural philosophy and medical science : of the latter 
he seems to have obtained a somewhat considerable knowledge. 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 101 

This quiet existence was, after a time, rather interestingly 
and unexpectedly enlivened. Howard, in one set of apart- 
ments which he occupied, met with less attention than he 
deemed his due ; probably it was thought his mild nature 
could be imposed upon with impunity : he quitted the place. 
Entering lodgings kept by a widow named Loidore, he found 
himself waited upon to his absolute satisfaction. In his new 
abode illness overtook him, or rather his perpetual ill-health 
reached a crisis. Mrs. Loidore tended him with all possible 
iindness, and the result on his part was not only gratitude, but, 
as we believe, sincere attachment. On his recovery, he offered 
her his hand. She was above fifty ; he was now about twenty- 
five. Her health, too, was delicate ; but Howard was reso- 
lute, and, after of course objecting, she of course consented. 
The circumstance indicates Howard's extreme simplicity of 
nature, and power to do, in the face of talk and laughter, what 
he thought right and desirable ; it may also be regarded as one 
proof among many of a naturally affectionate nature : it reveals 
nothing further. 

For two or three years, the married pair resided at Stoke 
Newington, much in the same manner, we presume, as former- 
ly. Ploward had a real, though by no means ardent affection 
for his wife ; it was a sincere and even keen affliction he ex- 
perienced, when, after the above period, she died. 

We have glanced lightly over the youthful period of How- 
ard's life. We have deemed it right to do so, although there 
are a few incidents recorded at the period not altogether un- 
important, their importance being derived solely from the 
light reflected on them by his subsequent history, and their 
own aspect being somewhat trivial. The extent of information 
they afford us regarding him may be summed up by saying, 
that they show him to have been methodic, gentle, and, above 



102 HOWARD ; 

all, considerately kind. He seems certainly never to have 
allowed the pleasure of making a fellow-creature happier to 
have escaped him. 

He was now about twenty-eight years of age. Unbound by 
any tie to England, he determined again to travel. The ex- 
citement arising from the occurrence of the great earthquake 
at Lisbon was still fresh, and he was attracted to Portugal. 
He sailed for Lisbon, in a vessel called the Hanover. His 
voyage, however, was not destined to have a peaceable termi- 
nation ; and the circumstances into which he was about to be 
thrown, exercised a perceptible influence on his future career. 
The ship was taken by a French privateer ; Howard was made 
prisoner. The treatment he met with was inhuman. Eor 
forty hours he was kept with the other prisoners on board the 
French vessel, without water, and with " hardly a morsel of 
food." They were then carried into Brest, and committed to 
the castle. They were flung into a dungeon ; and, after a fur- 
ther period of starvation, " a joint of mutton was at length 
thrown into the midst of them, which, for want of the accom- 
modation of so much as a solitary knife, they were obliged to 
tear to pieces, and gnaw like dogs." There was nothing in the 
dungeon to sleep on except some straw, and in such a place, 
and with such treatment, Howard and his fellow-prisoners re- 
mained for nearly a week. He was then removed to Carpaix, 
and afterward to Morlaix, where he impressed his jailer with 
such a favorable opinion of his character, that he was permit- 
ted to enjoy an amount of liberty not usually accorded to pris- 
oners in his situation. 

At Morlaix, Howard had inducement and apology enough 
for remaining idle, or, at least, for occupying himself solely in 
negotiations for his own release, and in gathering up his 
strength after his hardships. But he did not remain idle, nor 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHIIOPY. 103 

did he abandon liimself to the above occupations. The suffer- 
ings he had witnessed while inmate of a French prison would 
not let him rest. He had seen something amiss, something 
unjust, something which pained his heart as a feeling man ; his 
English instinct of order and of work was outraged; there 
was something to be done ; and he set himself to do it. He 
collected information respecting the state of English prisoners 
of war in France. He found that his own treatment was part, 
and nowise a remarkable part, of a system ; that many hun- 
dreds of these prisoners had perished through sheer ill usage, 
and that thirty-six had been buried in a hole at Dinan in one 
day. In fact, he discovered that he had come upon an abomi- 
nation and iniquity on the face of the earth, which, strangely 
enough, had been permitted to go on unheeded until it had 
reached this frightful excess. • He learned its extent, and de- 
parted with his information for England ; he was permitted to 
cross the Channel, on pledging his word to return, if a French 
officer was not exchanged for him. He secured his own liber- 
ation, and at once set to work on behalf of his oppressed 
countrymen. His representations were effectual : those pris- 
oners of war who were confined in the three prisons which 
had been the principal scene of the mischief, returned to Eng- 
land in the first cartel ships that arrived. Howard modestly 
remarks, that perhaps his sufferings on this occasion increased 
his sympathy with the inhabitants of prisons. There is not 
much to be said of these simple and unimposing circumstances. 
They merely show that he, on coming into a position to do a 
piece of work, did it at once, and thoroughly ; that his feelings 
were not of the sentimental sort, which issue in tears or words, 
but of the silent sort, which issue in deeds ; that what had 
doubtless been seen by many a dapper officer, and perhaps by 
prisoners not military, in full health and with ample leisure, 



104 HOWARD ; 

had not been righted until seen by Howard, sickly and slow 
of speech. It was nothing great or wonderful that he did : in 
the circumstances, nine out of ten would have done nothing at 
all. He was thanked by the commissioners for the relief of 
sick and wounded seamen ; but his real reward was the intense 
pleasure with which he must have hailed the arrival of those 
cartel ships, and felt that at least so much iniquity and cruelty 
was ended. For the first time in his life, dull Howard was at 
the top of his class. 

Abandoning, for the present, all thoughts of foreign travel, 
Howard now retired to Bedfordshire, where he possessed an 
estate. This was situated at the village of Cardington, and 
had been the scene of his childhood ; it was his principal resi- 
dence during life. We come to contemplate him in what he 
himself declared to have been the only period of his life in 
which he enjoyed real pleasure. Though quiet and unobserved, 
that pleasure was indeed real, and deep. 

He had reached the prime of his manhood ; his years were 
about thirty. His character, in its main features, was matured. 
He was quiet, circumspect, considerate ; he knew himself, and 
was guarded by a noble modesty from obtruding into any 
sphere for which he was not fitted by nature ; the groundwork 
of his character was laid in method, kindness, and deep, un- 
questioning godliness. The time had arrived when he was to 
experience a profound and well-placed affection, and to have it 
amply returned. Henrietta Leeds was the daughter of Ed- 
ward Leeds of Croxton in Cambridgeshire ; she was about the 
same age with Howard, and seemed formed by nature pre- 
cisely for his wife. She resembled him in deep and simple 
piety ; she had drawn up a covenant in which she consigned 
herself, for time and eternity, to her Father in heaven, and 
signed it with her own hand. She resembled him in general 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 105 

simplicity of nature : she had no taste or liking for aught be- 
yond what was plain and neat. Most of all, she resembled 
him in kindness of disposition ; the bestowal of happiness was 
the source of her keenest joy. Her features were regular ; 
their expression mild, somewhat pensive, and not lacking in- 
telligence : a little gilding from love might make her face seem 
beautiful. Where she and Howard first met, we know not ; 
but meet they did, and thought it might be advisable to make 
arrangements to obviate the necessity of future parting. His 
love was certainly in no sense rapturous. It was sincere and 
deep, but characteristic ; it retained, at a period when such is 
usually dispensed with, the noble human faculty of looking be- 
fore and after. Love has a thousand modes and forms, all of 
which may be consistent with reality and truth. It may come 
like the burst of morning light, kindling the whole soul into 
new life and radiance ; it may grow, inaudibly and unknown, 
until its roots are found to be through and through the heart, 
entwined w^ith its every fiber ; it is unreal and false only when 
it is a name for some form of selfishness. Howard's was 
a quiet, earnest, undemonstrative love. He was drawn by a 
thousand sympathies to Harriet ; never did nature say more 
clearly to man that here was the one who had been created to 
be his helpmate ; he heard nature's voice, and loved. But he 
was quite calm. He even looked over the wall of the future 
into the paradise which he was to enter, and remarked the 
possibility of difference arising between the happy pair whom 
he saw walking in the distance. Accordingly, he went to Har- 
riet, and proposed a stipulation that, in case of diversity of 
opinion, his voice should be decisive. Harriet assented. They 
w-f^re married in 1758, and took up their residence at Carding- 
ton. Here, with the exception of a few years spent at a small 
5* 



106 HOWARD ; 

property wliich Howard purchased in Hampshire, they contin- 
ued until the death of Mrs. Howard. 

We can not but linger for a brief space on the one pleasant 
spot in Howard's earthly journey. Ere he met Harriet, he 
had turned to the right hand and to the left, scarce knowing or 
caring whither he went, and dogged always by pain. Not 
long after her death, he heard the call which made him a name 
forever, and which bade him leave the wells and the palm- 
trees of rest, to take his road along the burning sand of duty. 
Not only may the spectacle of a truly happy English home be 
pleasing, but we may gather from the prospect certain hints 
touching the actual nature and precise value of Howard's 
character. 

The pleasures of the new pair were somewhat varied. The 
embellishment of the house and grounds went so far. This 
was a business of particular interest with Howard. He b•,^ilt 
additions to his house, and laid out three acres in pleasure- 
grounds, erecting an arbor, and cutting and planting according 
to his simple taste ; the approving smile of Harriet always 
sped the work. A visit to London, too, was proposed and 
effected ; but the enjoyment obtained was nowise great, for 
neither was adapted for town life, and Harriet in particular 
longed for the green fields. Natural philosophy, in a very 
small way, was put under contribution. Then, there was oc- 
casional visiting and entertaining of the country gentlemen of 
Bedfordshire. Howard always exercised a warm and dignified 
hospitality, and though remarkably abstemious himself, kept 
ever a good table and excellent wines for his guests. But of 
all the joys of this Bedfordshire home, by far the principal 
arose out of the fact that Howard and his wife were both "by 
nature admirers of happy human faces." Around Cardington, 
there was soon drawn a circle of such ; gradually widening, 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 107 

still brightening, and, Idj nature's happy law, ever shedding a 
stronger radiance of reflected joy on the center whence their 
own gladness came. Shortly after the marriage, we find Har- 
riet disposing of certain jewels, and putting the price into what 
they called the charity -purse ; its contents went to procure this 
crowning luxury, happ}'- human faces. Since this pleasure in- 
terests us more than any of the others, we must inquire how 
the money was disposed of. 

The village of Cardington had been the abode of poverty 
and wretchedness. Its situation was low and marshy ; the in- 
habitants were unhealthy ; ague, that haunts the fen and cow- 
ers under the mantle of the mist, especially abounded. Alto- 
gether, this little English village had the discontented, uneasy 
look of a sick child. And the intellectual state of its people 
corresponded to their physical ; no effort, so far as we learn, 
had been made to impart to them aught of instruction. Part 
of this village was on the estate of John Howard. Unnoticed 
by any, and not deeming himself noteworthy, but having in 
his bosom a true, kind heart, and loyally anxious to approve 
himself to his God, he came to reside upon it with his wife. 
No bright talents were his, and his partner was a simple crea- 
ture, of mild womanly ways, made to love rather than to think. 
Yet the fact was, account for it as you will, that, year by year, 
the village of Cardington showed a brighter face to the morn- 
ing sun ; year by year, the number of damp, unwholesome 
cottages grew less ; year by year, you might see new and dif- 
ferent cottages spring up, little kitchen-gardens behind, little 
flower-gardens before, neat palings fronting the road, roses and 
creepers looking in at the windows, well-washed, strong-lunged, 
sunny-faced children frolicking round the doors. These cot- 
tages were so placed that they could see the sunlight ; the mist 
and the ague were driven back. Their inhabitants paid an 



108 HOWARD ; 

easy rent, sent their children to school, were a contented, 
orderly, sober people. Cardington became " one of the neatest 
villages in the kingdom." If you asked one of the villagers 
to what or whom it owed all this, the answer would have 
been — John Howard. 

Kind-hearted, conscientious, shrewd, and accurate, he had 
lost no time in acquainting himself with the evils with which 
he had to contend, and addressing himself to the contest. The 
damp, unhealthy cottages on his own estate were by degrees 
removed, and such as we have described built in their stead ; 
those not on his own estate, requiring a similar treatment, were 
purchased. He let the new cottages at an advantageous rate, 
annexing certain conditions to their occupancy. He became 
the center of quite a patriarchal system. His tenants were, to 
a certain extent, under his authority ; they were removable at 
will, they were bound over to sobriety and industry, they were 
required to abstain from such amusements as he deemed of 
immoral tendency, and attendance at public worship was en- 
joined. Besides the customary ordinances, there was divine 
service in a cottage set apart for the purpose, the villagers, we 
are told, gladly availing themselves of the additional oppor- 
tunity. Schools also were established, not in Cardington alone, 
but in the neighboring hamlets. He ruled a little realm of 
his own ; a realm which, in the eighteenth century, was very 
favorably distinguished from the surrounding regions ; an un- 
marked patriarchal domain, whose government was, on the 
whole, beneficent. 

When we contemplate the phenomenon of Howard's influ- 
ence at Cardington, we can not but experience a strong impulse 
to question the fact of his having been, even intellectually, the 
ordinary, unoriginal man he has been called. It is fair to 
recollect that he was of that class which, preeminently, does 



A N D T II E RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 109 

nothing ; of that class whose epitaph Mr. Carlyle has written 
in Sartor Eesartus. His task was not, perhaps, very difficult ; 
but just think of the effect, if every English landlord performed 
his duty so conscientiously and so well. A biographer of 
Howard, writing when the present century was well advanced, 
has recorded that Cardington still retained, among English 
villages, a Jook of " order, neatness, and regularity." If mere 
common sense did this, it was common sense under some new 
motive and guidance ; we can only regret that it so rarely fol- 
lows the higher light of godliness. And if Howard's claim to 
positive applause is slight, what are we to say of his exculpa- 
tion from the positive sin which, during that century, accumu- 
lated so fearfully on the head of certain classes and corpora- 
tions in England ? Different had been the prospect now, had 
England, in that century, been "covered with such schools as 
Howard's. Surely one may ask, without arrogance, why did 
not the Church of England accomplish at least so much 
then 1 

In his owai household, there reigned calmness and cheerful 
content. The whole air and aspect of the place was such as 
might have suggested that perfect little picture by Tennyson, 

"An English home — gray twilight pour'd 
On dewy pastures, dewy trees, 
Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, 
A haunt of ancient Peace." 

He lived much in the consideration of Old Testament times 
and worthies, shaping his life after that of the Hebrew Patri- 
archs. His Bible was to him a treasury of truth, wdiich he 
never even dreamed inexhaustible. As he looked over the 
brightening scene of his humble endeavors, and the pleasant 
bovvers around his own dwelling, and felt all his tranquil joy 



110 HOWARD ; 

represented and consummated in his Harriet, we may imagine 
these words breathing through his heart — " I will be as the 
dew unto Israel :" as the dew, stealing noiselessly down, in an 
evening stillness, unseen by any eye, yet refreshing the very 
heart of nature. Harriet, with all her simplicity, was a per- 
fect wife ; she could hear the beating of her husband's heart. 
Once there was somewhat over from the yearly expenditure. 
Howard, thinking his wife might derive enjoyment from a trip, 
proposed that they should spend it in a visit to London. We 
think Harriet looked quietly into his eyes as she answered, 
" What a pretty cottage it would build !" Conceive the smile 
of silent unspeakable satisfaction, of deep unbounded love, that 
would spread over the placid features of Howard as he heard 
these words. 

The part taken by the kind and gentle Harriet in the general 
disseminatk)n of blessing over Howard's neighborhood was 
nowise unimportant. In the hour of sickness and distress, she 
was to be seen by the bed or the fireside, supplying little 
wants, whispering words t)f consolation. She also made it a 
peculiar part of her duty to see that the female portion of the 
community was employed, and supply them with work when 
threatened with destitution. 

Thus was Howard, cheered and assisted by his wife, an un- 
assuming, godly English landlord, doing his work, a^id never 
imagining that he was a profitable servant. His teu^nt^y, ancl\ 
specially his domestics, loved him ; although, as we are happy 
to find, since it is an almost conclusive, and certainly indispen- 
sable proof of decision and discrimination, there was jmt a per- 
fect absence of murmuring and insinuation against him in^ftl 
village. He engaged in constant and intiml|e converse ^vVith 
his dependents, interesting himself in their affairs/^nd giving 
little pieces of advice. He might be seen entering their cot- 



AND THE KISE OF PHILAXTHROPT. Ill 

tages, and sitting down to chat and eat an apple. We can 
figure him, too, as he walked along the road, 

" "With measured footfall, firm and mild," 

stopping the children he met, giving each of them a halfpenny, '"^ 
and imparting the valuable and comprehensive advice, to " be 
good children, and wash their hands and faces." We can dis- 
cern, as he utters the words, a still smile of peace and satisfac- 
tion on his really noble English countenance. We must pro- 
nounce it such. There was, it is ti'ue, no sign of creative 
power in the eye ; there were no lines of deep thought on the 
brow ; but decision, and shrewdness, and intense though gov- 
erned kindness, were written there. Above all, it was cloud- 
less in its clearness. It was the calm, open coutenance of a 
man who could look the world -in the face, which was darkened 
by no stain of guile, or guilt, or self-contempt, and on which, 
through habitual looking upward, there was a glow of the 
mild light of heaven. Nor was it destitute of certain reposing 
strength, a look of complete self-knowledge and self-mastery, 
gently shaded, as it was, by a deep but manly humility, which 
told again of the bended knee and the secret walk with God. 
When we look at HoAvard's portrait, we cease to wonder that 
his face was always received as an unquestionable pledge of 
perfect horior and substantial character. 

There was one drop by whiph the cup of happiness in the 
home at Cardington might still have been augmented. Howard 
and his wife had no child. Harriet seems to have been pecu- 
liarly adapted to perform the duties of a mother ; so gentle, so 
ffill of quiet sense, so well able to read a want ere it reached 
the tongue. At length, after seven years of married life, on 
Wedne5da>^ the 27th of March, 1765, she had a son. On the 
ensuing Sabbath, Howard went to church as usual ; all seemed 



112 HOWARD ; 

to be doing well. After his return she was suddenly taken ill, 
and died in his arms. She had just seen her boy, just felt the 
unuttered happiness of a new love, just discerned that a fresh 
brightness rested on the face of the world, and then she had to 
close her eyes, and lie down in the silent grave. 

Howard's feelings, it is scarce requisite for us now to say, 
were not of the sort which commonly reach the surface. There 
was nothing sudden or impulsive in his nature ; his very kind- 
ness and affection were ever so tempered, ever rendered so 
equable, by consideration, that they might at times wear the 
mask of austerity. But we can not doubt that the sorrow he 
felt for his Harriet reached tne innermost deeps of his soul. 
A light had passed from the " revolving year ;" the flowers 
which Love may strew in the path of the " stern daughter of 
the voice of God " — for Duty herself strews no flowers^ — had 
withered away ; until he again clasped the hand of Harriet, his 
enjoyment had ceased. He laid her in her grave, and a simple 
tablet in Cardington Church told the simple truth, that she had 
" opened her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue was the law 
of kindness." A good many years afterward, on the eve of a 
departure for the Continent, from which Howard might never 
return, he was walking with his son in his grounds, and men- 
tioning some improvements which he had contemplated: — 
" These, however. Jack," he said, " in case I should not come 
back, you will pursue or not, as you may think proper ; but 
remember, this walk was planted by your mother ; and if ever 
you touch a twig of it, may blessing never rest upon you !" 

His infant son was now all that was left on earth to Howard. 
He loved him with the whole force of his nature. Two strong 
feelings, having reference to this earth, and two alone, were, in 
the years of his long journeyings, to be found in his bosom : the 
one was the memory of Harriet, the other the love of his boy. 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 113 

But it is not unimportant to a perfect comprehension of the 
character of Howard, to know that there was, in his general 
deportment as hushand and father, a gravity, decision, and 
authority, which wore the aspect of austereness. The founder 
of philanthropy was as free as ever man from any form of senti- 
mentalism ; it was for real affliction, for substantial pain, he 
felt and acted ; a tender, winning, soothing manner was never 
his. Whatever may be said of modern philanthropists, he 
certainly was not one whose feelings carried him away, who 
saw distress and injustice, and, bursting into tears, rushed, 
half-blinded with his sympathy, to make bad worse. He has 
been spoken of by some as if he resembled one who, perceiv- 
ing a child drowning in a reservoir, and being moved to pity 
by its cries, casts down an embankment to save it, and floods 
a whole country. He was no such man. Since the world be- 
gan, until he appeared, no one had done so much for the relief 
of distress, simply as such ; and yet we feel convinced that 
very few men have lived who could look upon pain with 
calmer countenance than he. Nineteen men in twenty had 
been weeping, and either blundering, or leaving the distress 
alone ; Howard remained quite cool, looked at it, measured it, 
mastered it. 

For about a year after the death of his wife, he continued to 
reside at Cardington. Toward the end of the year 1766, we 
find him visiting Bath ; ill-health had again, in new extremity, 
returned upon him. In the spring of the following year, he 
traveled to Holland, and quickly returning home, remained at 
Cardington, until it was time to send his son to school. In the 
interval, nothing worthy of notice occurred ; he pursued his 
old plans for the improvement of his neighborhood, deriving 
his principal comfort from his boy. 

At length it became proper to send his son to school, and 



114 HOWARD ; 

Howard prepared again to visit the Continent. Cardington 
had now, indeed, become sad to him. He in great measure 
broke up his establishment there, providing, with his own con- 
siderate kindness, for his domestics; these, as we have hinted, 
and as has been elsewhere remarked, loved him with an affec- 
tion worthy of the servants of an old patriarch. He departed 
in the autumn of 1769 ; his intention was to visit the south of 
Italy, and probably remain there for the winter : he went by 
Calais, the south of France, and Geneva. 

We come now to what we consider a most important epoch 
in Howard's life. We have not failed to inform the reader of 
the pervasion, from a period too early to be precisely fixed, of 
his whole character, by godliness ; and we saw how the fact in- 
fluenced his benevolent exertions in Bedfordshire. We have 
not yet, however, looked, so to speak, into the heart of How- 
ard's religion ; we have only noted it incidentally, and from 
afar. We proceed to view it more closely ; it will be of great 
importance to ascertain the weight and nature of its influence. 
We are assured — that we have arrived at a period when his 
spiritual life reached a crisis, which determined, in certain im- 
portant respects, his future character and career. Since it is 
necessary to carry readers along with us in our impressions, 
we turn to our narrative. 

We have said that Howard had intention of spending the 
winter either in the south of Italy or Geneva. On arriving at 
Turin, he abandoned the project. We learn from his own 
words that he had been pondering seriously the object and na- 
ture of his journey. He accused himself of misspending the 
" talent" committed to him, of gratifying a mere curiosity with 
those pecuniary means which might be turned in some way to 
God's glory, and which were necessarily withdrawn from works 
of mercy ; he thought of the loss of so many English Sab- 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 115 

baths; he thought of "a retrospective view on a death-bed;" 
he thought also of his " distance from his dear boy." He de- 
termined to return. He concludes the memorandum from 
which we gather these facts in the following words :* — " Look 
forward, oh my soul ! How low, how mean, how little, is 
every thing but what has a view to that glorious world of 
light, life, and love. The preparation of the heart is of God, 
Prepare the heart, oh God ! of thy miworthy creature, and 
unto Thee be all the glory, through the boundless ages of 
eternity. 

"This night my trembling soul almost longs to take its 
flight to see and know the wonders of redeeming love — -join 
the triumphant choir ; sin and sorrow fled away, God, my Re- 
deemer, all in all. Oh ! happy spirits that are safe in those 
mansions." 

He turned homeward, and in February we find him at the 
Hague. We have here a further record of his spiritual life. 
We extract it entire. 

" Hague, Sunday evening, February 11. 
" I would record the goodness of God to the unworthiest of his 
creatures : for some days past, a habitual serious frame, relent- 
ing for my sin and folly, applying to the blood of Jesus Christ, 
solemnly surrendering myself and babe to Him, begging the 
conduct of His Holy Spirit ; I hope, a more tender conscience," 
evinced "by a greater fear of the offending God, a temper 
more abstracted from this world, more resigned to death or 
life, thirsting for union and communion with God, as my Lord 
and my God. Oh ! the wonders of redeeming love ! Some 
faint hope," that " even I ! through redeeming mercy in the 

* Howard did not write English grammatically ; we alter the spell- 
ing and punctuation. 



116 HOWARD ; 

perfect righteousness, the full atoning sacrifice, shall ere long 
be made the monument of the rich, free grace and mercy of 
God, through the divine Redeemer. Oh, shout my soul! 
Grace, grace, free, sovereign, rich and unbounded grace ! Not 
I, not I, an ill-deserving, hell-deserving creature ! But, where 
sin has abounded, I trust grace superabounds. Some hope ! — 
what joy in that hope ! — that nothing shall separate my soul 
from the love of God in Christ Jesus ; and, my soul, as such 
a frame is thy delight, pray frequently and fervently to the 
Father of spirits, to bless His word, and your retired mo- 
ments to your serious conduct in life. 

" Let not, my soul, the interests of a moment engross thy 
thoughts, or be preferred to my eternal interests. Look for- 
ward to that glory which will be revealed to those who are 
faithful to death. My soul, walk thou with God ; be faithful ; 
hold on, hold out ; and then — what words can utter. J. H." 

We anxiously desire to avoid presumption here, and would 
leave every reader to his own judgment and conclusion in the 
matter ; but we think we are not altogether unable to trace 
the workings of Howard's mind through this portion of his 
history. 

It seems to us that, on leaving Cardington, his mind had en- 
gaged in deep reflection. His boy had gone away from him ; 
his Harriet was sleeping silently, her tender ways were to 
cheer him no more ; he looked over his past life, from which 
the last rays of joy's sunlight were departing ; he looked for- 
ward to an old age, embittered by perpetual ill-health. His 
mind awoke, in the discipline of sorrow, to a deeper earnest- 
ness. He felt, with sterner realization than heretofore, that 
the world was a desert, and time a dream ; with a new and 
tremendous energy his soul rose toward the eternal kingdoms. 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. llY 

He looked with earnest scrutiny within, he closed his eye more 
to all around, and gazed upward from his knees for the smiling 
of one countenance upon him. The intensity of his feelings 
would not comport with the prosecution of his journey to 
Italy. He mused upon it in the strain we have indicated. He 
concluded that it was his duty to return home ; and, in a state 
of mind not a little agitated, proceeded in the direction of 
England. We can not certainly say whether it had been his 
immediate intention to return to Cardington ; he was very 
fond of Holland, and would, perhaps, at the Hague, be able to 
enjoy Sabbaths like those of his home. Be this as it may, he 
did not proceed further than the place last named. His mind 
appears here to have become calmer ; we might say, indeed, 
that the second extract we have made reveals an almost 
rapturous frame of spirit. It is a detail of God's goodness 
toward him ; and let it be remarked, that this goodness con- 
sists in work wi'ought in him, in his closer approximation to 
the requirements of God's law. The man who can feel 
ecstatic joy for that, and give God all the glory, has nothing 
higher to attain to in this Avorld; and on him no essential 
change will be wrought by passing through the gates of 
heaven. 

He again turned southward. At Lyons we find him writing 
thus : — 

"Lyoxs, April 4, 17 TO. 

" Repeated instances of the unwearied mercy and goodness 
of God : preserved hitherto in health and safety ! Blessed be 
the name of the Lord ! Endeavor, oh my soul ! to cultivate 
and maintain a thankful, serious, humble and resigned frame 
and temper of mind. May it be thy chief desire that the 
honor of God, the spread of the Redeemer's name and Gospel, 
may be promoted. Oh, consider the everlasting worth of 



118 HOWARD ; 

spiritual and divine enjoyments, then thou wilt see the vanity 
and nothingness of worldly pleasures. Remember, oh my soul ! 
St. Paul, who was determined to know nothing in comparison 
to Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. A tenderness of con- 
science I would ever cultivate ; no step would I take without 
acknowledging God. I hope my present journey, though 
again into Italy, is no way wrong, rejoicing if in any respect I 
could bring the least improvement that might be of use to my 
own country. But, oh my soul, stand in awe, and sin not ; 
daily, fervently pray for restraining grace ; remember, if 
thou desirest the death of the righteous, and thy latter end 
like his, thy life must be so also. In a little while thy course 
will be run, thy sands finished : a parting farewell with my 
ever dear boy, and then, oh my soul, be weighed in the balance 
— wanting, wanting! but oh, the glorious hope of an interest 
in the blood and righteousness of my Redeemer and my God ! 
In the most solemn manner I commit my spirit into thy hand, 
oh Lord God of my salvation ! 

" My hope in time ! my trust through the boundless ages of 
eternity ! John Howard." 

The last quotation we deem it necessary to make, is one of 
very great importance. It commences with a slight retrospect 
and self-examination ; it passes into a deliberate dedication of 
himself and his all to God : — 

"l^APLES, May 2*7, 1110. 
" When I left Italy last year, it then appeared most prudent 
and proper ; my return, I hope, is under the best direction, 
not presumptuous, being left to the folly of a foolish heart. 
Not having the strongest spirits or constitution, my continuing 
long in Holland or any place lowers my spirits ; so I thought 
returning would be no uneasiness on the review, as sinful and 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 119 

vain diversions are not my object, but the honor and glory of 
God my highest ambition. Did I now see it wrong by being 
the cause of pride, I would go back ; but being deeply sensible 
it is the presence of God that makes the happiness of every 
place, so, oh my soul ! keep close to Him in the amiable light 
of redeeming love; and amid the snares thou art particularly 
exposed to in a country of such wickedness and folly, stand 
thou in awe, and sin not. Commune with thine own heart ; 
see what progress thou makest in thy religious journey ! Art 
thou nearer the heavenly Canaan, the vital flame burning 
clearer and clearer 1 or are the concerns of a moment engross- 
ing thy foolish heart 1 Stop ; remember thou art a candidate 
for eternity : daily, fervently pray for wisdom ; lift up your 
eyes to the Rock of Ages, and then look down on the glory of 
this world. A little while, and thy journey will be ended ; be 
thou faithful unto death. Duty is thine, though the power is 
God's ; pray to Him to give thee a heart to hate sin more, 
uniting thy heart in his fear. Oh, magnify the Lord, my soul, 
and, my spirit, rejoice in God my Saviour ! His free grace, un- 
bounded mercy, love unparalleled, goodness unlimited. And 
oh, this mercy, this love, this goodness exerted for me ! Lord 
God, why me % When I consider, and look into my heart, I 
doubt, I tremble. Such a vile creature ; sin, folly, and imper- 
fection in every action ! Oh, dreadful thought ! — a body of 
sin and death I carry about me, ever ready to depart from 
God ; and with all the dreadful catalogue of sins committed, 
my heart faints within me, and almost despairs. But yet, oh 
my soul, why art thou cast down ? why art thou disquieted 1 
Hope in God ! His free grace in Jesus Christ ! Lord, I be- 
lieve ; help my unbelief. Shall I limit the grace of God 1 
Can I fathom His goodness 1 Here, on His sacred day, I, once 
more in the dust before the Eternal God, acknowledge my sins 



120 HOWARD ; 

heinous and aggravated in His sight. I would have the deepest 
sorrow and contrition of heart, and cast my guilty and polluted 
soul on thy sovereign mercy in the Redeemer. Oh, compas- 
sionate and divine Redeemer, save me from the dreadful guilt 
and power of sin, and accept my solemn, free, and, I trust, un- 
reserved full surrender of my soul, my spirit, my dear child, 
all I am and have, into thy hands ! Unworthy of thy accept- 
ance ! Yet, oh Lord God of mercy, spurn me not from thy 
presence ; accept of me, vile as I am — I hope a repenting, re- 
turning prodigal. I glory in my choice, acknowledge my obli- 
gations as a servant of the Most High God ; and now may 
the Eternal God be my refuge, and thou, my soul, faithful to 
that God that will never leave or forsake thee ! 

" Thus, oh my Lord and my God, is humbly bold even a 
worm to covenant with Thee ! Do Thou ratify and confirm 
it, and make me the everlasting monument of Thy unbound- 
ed mercy. Amen, amen, amen. Glory to God the Father, 
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, forever and ever, 
amen ! 

"Hoping my heart deceives me not, and trusting in His 
mercy for restraining and preventing grace, though rejoicing 
in returning what I have received of Him into His hands, yet 
with fear and trembling I sign my unworthy name. 

John Howard." 

Howard was not a man who found any special delight in 
using his pen ; the deep modesty of his nature, the deficiency 
of his education, his consequent want of affluence in expression, 
and the whole structure of his character as universally recog- 
nized, put this beyond dispute. It was only when his heart 
was very full, and the emotions with which it burned were as 
mounting lava, that they overflowed through that channel. 



AND THE RISE OF PHIL A NTH ROPY. 121 

We regard tlie expressions ^e have found him using simply as 
pulses of his spiritual life, proceeding as truly from the center 
of his spiritual nature as the blood which at fever heat might 
gush from his heart, from the center of his physical fi'ame. 
And consider the earnestness, the stammering, gasping intens- 
ity, with which they start ruggedly forth; mark the awe- 
struck humility with which he bows down before the Infinite 
God, and, as it were, the mute amazement of gratitude, which, 
when the smile of God falls out of heaven upon his head, forces 
him to exclaim, '• Lord God, why me f Surely this last is a 
remarkable passage of feeling. Will it not be with such an 
emotion that the redeemed of God, when the eternal inherit- 
ance, so far surpassing expectation and desert, at last and sud- 
denly bursts upon their sight, shall shrink from asserting their 
right, and exclaim, " Lord, when did we merit this f Observe, 
finally, here, respecting Howard, the completeness of the result, 
the unwavering, unexcepting abdication of the throne of the 
soul to God. We think this was the consummation of the epoch 
in his spiritual history of which we have spoken. 

One other remark we must make respecting these docu- 
ments. In those awful moments, when Howard was alone 
with God, and his eyes, looking to the Rock of Ages, were so 
solemnly raised above every concern of time, there was yet 
one earthly visitant that entered the secret places of his heart : 
that visitant was his boy. We add no comment. 

The time was now near when Howard was to find his pecu- 
liar work. We think, though with reverence and hesitation, 
it may be said that he was specially fitted for it by God. Im- 
planted by nature in his bosom, he exhibited from his earliest 
years a deep and a notably cosmopolitan compassion for the 
afflicted as such. In early years his nature ^as stilled, hal- 
lowed, and strengthened by religious principle. As he adr 

6 



122 HOWARD ; 

vanced in years, the great truths of Calvinism, or rather that 
one great truth of Calvinism, The Lord reigneth — the Lord, 
just, sovereign, incomprehensible, in whose presence no finite 
being can speak — formed a basis, as it were of adamant, for 
his whole character. He was sorely tried by physical ail- 
ments, and, at the risk of his life, was compelled to pursue 
rigidly abstemious habits, being thus also debarred from all 
the pleasures of the great world. He was brought soon into 
actual experience of the distresses suffered by the inhabitants 
of prisons, and his first piece of positive work in the world 
was the relief of such. His character was next matured, con- 
firmed, and mellowed, in the soft summer light of a quiet 
English home, where he loved and was loved by a true wife, 
and where, in such tasks as we have seen, a mild apprentice- 
ship was served to thoroughness and accuracy. He was then 
suddenly and awfully struck with affliction ; she who was so 
very beautiful in his eyes, 

*'Fair as a star, wlien only one 
Is shining in the sky," 

was taken away from him. And then, after a little time, 
came that crisis in his spiritual history which we have endeav- 
ored to delineate. Whatever were his natural abilities, he 
awoke from that crisis with a moral strength which no force 
of temptation could overcome, and a calm dauntlessness 
which nothing earthly could turn aside. Then he found his 
work. 

Howard's history thus seems to suggest the idea that God 
intended by him to bring prominently before the world some 
truth not hitherto duly regarded, to accomplish some work not 
hitherto adequately done : that the time had arived when some 
gospel — shall we call it the gospel of love ? — was to be more 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 123 

specially and explicitly unfolded than it had been heretofore. 
With deliberate and immovable fliith, he himself entertained 
this belief, and we know not how more fitly or fully to embody 
our opinion of Howard's part in this work, and our view of 
the invisible power which guided him therein, than in his own 
humble, yet, we think, even sublime words, written when it 
was well-nigh finished : — " I am not at all angry with the re- 
flections that some persons make, as they think to my dispar 
agement, because all they say of this kind gives God the 
greater honor; in whose Almighty hand no instrument is 
weak ; in whose presence no flesh must glory : but the whole 
conduct of this matter must be ascribed to Providence alone, 
and God by me intimates to the world, however weak and un- 
worthy / am, that He espouses the cause,"* and to Him, to Him 
alone, he all the praise.'''' 

Returning from the Continent, Howard remained for a cer- 
tain period at Cardington ; we hear of nothing remarkable in 
his life for some time. The state of his health in 1772 ren- 
dered it advisable to make a tour in the Channel Islands, but 
he speedily returned to Bedfordshire. Here, in 1773, he was 
called to the office of sheriff of the county. He considered it 
his duty to comply with the invitation, and became such. 
Prudence might have whispered another decision. He was a 
Dissenter, and by becoming sheriff incurred the liability of 
very severe penalties. We do not suppose- that his danger was 
very great ; but it was real. He was not without enemies ; 
and his act put it in the power of any one of them, with profit 
to himself, to inflict very serious injury on him. It is, besides, 
the part of prudence to guard against possibilities : there was, 
at least, the possibility that he might suffer. Howard, how- 
ever, with all his calmness, was too brave to be distinctively 
* The italics are Howard's. 



124 HOWARD ; 

■prudent. It might astonish some to find this among his 
adopted maxims- — " A fearless temper and an open heart are 
seldom strictly allied to prudence." It is the maxim of a 
truly brave man. In this affair of the sheriffdom he just kept 
prudence in its proper place; when the voice of duty was 
clear, its mouth was shut. 

The office of sheriff had been hitherto but a dignifying ap- 
pendage, its duties mainly those of show. Howard could not 
regard or treat it thus. He went to his work as usual, quietly, 
accurately, thoroughly. From time immemorial, abuses had 
prevailed ; safely wrapped in the mantle of custom, they had 
lived, and moved, and done their measure of evil, unregarded 
as smoke. The cool, clear eye of Howard, looking straight to 
the heart of every thing, could not but regard them. He had 
not acted long in the capacity of sheriff when his attention 
was arrested by something which struck him as strange and 
anomalous : something which had its existence amid the light 
of a brilliant and boasted civilization, but which was fitted 
rather to cower, snake-like and slimy, in the jungles of darkest 
barbarism. He fixed his attention upon certain persons who 
were declared not guilty by the voice of their countrymen, 
who were acquitted of every thing laid to their charge, and 
thus proved to have endured the hard affliction of confinement 
and temporary disgrace, when their country had nothing what- 
ever to say against them. He saw that these, on their acquit- 
tal, did not at once return to their welcoming and consoling 
friends; that their chains were not at once struck off, with 
urgent haste and self-accusing regret : they were positively 
conveyed back to prison, until they should pay certain fees to 
functionaries connected with the jail and court. Others, who 
also might have suffered months of confinement, and against 
whom, from the non-appearance of their prosecutors, not even 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 125 

a charge was preferred, were similarly treated. Others still, 
regarding whom the grand jury could not find such evidence 
of guilt as rendered it reasonable to try them, went the same 
way : — all, without semblance of accusation, were hailed back 
to prison. This cruel and glaring outrage on justice and feel- 
ing was quietly taking its course, and was likely for some time 
to do so in the county of Bedford, when it fixed the gaze of 
John Howard. Its days were then numbered. His proceed- 
ings were quick : observation, decision, and action, seemed al- 
most to have been united. The abuse was undeniable and in- 
defensible ; its mode of cure was by paying, in some other 
manner, the functionaries interested. The justices of the 
county were the men to be applied to ; the application was 
made. A new thing in the experience of these sedate func- 
tionaries ; it was proper to proceed with caution, deliberation, 
and prudence. The good, formal, drowsy justices looked up 
through their spectacles, and — found it necessary — to satisfy 
their minds — by seeing a precedent. Here, then, perhaps, the 
matter would stop, and the justices be troubled in their dozing 
no further. Howard did not stop. A precedent must be found : 
he takes horse at once, and proceeds to seek it in the neighbor- 
ing counties. 

In these counties, Howard met on all hands with injustice 
and disorder, but found no precedent for his proposed remedy. 
He saw more than he expected, and more than he came to 
seek. In his own simple words, he " beheld scenes of calam- 
ity." Such he could not see without a desire to alleviate ; and 
a desire with Howard, of necessity, became action. Gradually 
it became plain to him that he had discovered a great work to 
be done, and that he was the man intended by God to do it. 
In the performance of this work it was that the rest of his life 
was spent, and that his name became known and reverenced in 



126 HOWARD : 

every land under heaven. We have three questions to put 
and to answer respecting it : What was it 1 By what motives 
was Howard impelled to undertake it ? How did he perform 
it? It will be important, also, to consider, as we proceed, 
whether it had become necessary. 

What, then, first of all, was this work of Howard's ? Hav- 
ing already spoken at large of philanthropy, we shall not enter 
here upon the general subject ; to define Howard's particular 
part in calling it into existence is easy. 

Correspondent to, and resulting from, the sad discordance 
and rent in the individual human soul, there has been, in all 
ages, a great severance in the human family. A part of that 
family has always been put aside by the rest, and subjected to 
penal inflictions. Sorrowful, truly, is the aspect thus opened 
up to us. In the many-chambered dwelling framed for them 
by their Father, men could not live together and at peace. 
The roof and spires of that dwelling seem to rest in sunshine ; 
in the higher apartments is the voice of mirth and gladness ; 
lower down the darkness of sorrow begins to thicken ; and, 
beneath all, there have ever been lightless dungeons, from 
which, through the whole course of human history, have arisen 
the broken groans of agony, or the lone wailings of despair. 
By a stern and awful necessity, these dungeons were never 
empty ; men were compelled to chain down their brothers in 
the darkness, lest, like maniacs, they should plunge their knives 
in the hearts that pitied them, or, like fiends, bring on all the 
destruction of Sodom ; never out of the ears of humanity could 
pass the doleful voice of lamentation, crying, like the conscience 
of the race, " Fallen, fallen, fliUen." 

Eespecting these dungeons, and their inhabitants, three 
metliods lay open to those who had been bold to take their 
fellow-men and fling them in fetters out of their sight They 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 127 

might look do^^ll upon them with the fierce glare of mdignation, 
hate, and "revenge;" they might say, "Caitiffs, we hate you," 
ye have passed beyond the range of law and pity, our duty 
towards you now is to load the whip, and to whet the ax. Or 
they might adapt a milder, but still more cruel mode of pro- 
cedure. They might turn them, in sickened horror, from the 
sight of the anguish whose existence they would forget ; they 
might carefully deafen the walls, and stop up every avenue 
through which the sounds of woe might ascend ; they might 
then urge the dance, and laugh, and sing, they might sweep on 
in the glad pageantry of coronation and victory, they might 
listen to the chantings of solemn organs, or the light tremblings 
of bridal music, unsaddened by any cloud that floated up from 
below. Meanwhile, calamity might be waxing greater and 
greater there, writing its pale . emblems on too many faces ; 
famine, pestilence, torture, and all injustice, might enter unseen ; 
a groan of agony might go up to heaven, yet pass unheard by 
men on earth. Or, lastly, they might say. Be these tenants of 
the dungeon what they may, they are the children of our Father, 
the creatures of our God ; we dare do toward them precisely 
what He commands, and has rendered necessary. We shall 
then avoid the fury of the first method, and the cruel cowardice 
of the second. We shall not, in weak and inhuman indolence, 
shut our ears to the sounds of human woe ; we shall know 
what the case is, that we may meet its requirements : neither 
shall we, as avenging demons, pour the lava of wrath and re- 
venge on the heads of our fellow-men : we shall do what law 
ordains, and that alone : we shall light the lamp of Justice, and 
commit it to the hand of Love. 

Of the first and last of these methods we have already spoken, 
At the time when Howard appeared, the second was widely 
and sadly prevalent ; and the work he did may be briefly but 



128 Ko w AiiD ; 

compendiously indicated in these words : — He penetrated into 
the dungeons of the -world, and compelled men to hear the 
voice of the agony beneath their feet. The result of this work 
was, that a voice of pity was heard over the world, saying that 
cruelty had gone too far, and that the third method must now 
be attempted. 

We inquire next, In what light did he regard his work, and 
what motives impelled him to undertake it 1 Touching the 
first of these points there can be no doubt. Ignorant as a child 
of all metaphysical speculation, his simple theory of the world 
was, that all men were equally devoid of merit before God, 
and that there is no reason by possibility to be alleged why we 
should not love every member of the human family. This is 
fully contained in the answer which he gave, after having been 
long engaged in his work, to one expressing his surprise at his 
deep love and pity for the depraved : — " I consider that, if it 
had not been for divine grace, I might have been as abandoned 
as they are." In this sentence is contained , not only an ample 
exposition and defense of Howard's views as a philanthropist, 
but also the whole j^hilosophy of Christian Philanthropy. The 
subordinate motives w^hich urged Howard on his enterprise, 
and supported him in his achievement, are easily discoverable. 
It is certain that the precise position into which he was brought 
by the death of his wife rendered his home a place of small 
comfort ; his own words expressly testify the fact. It is true, 
also, that he had traveled much during his life, and that travel- 
ing was by no means disagreeable to him, but rather the re- 
verse. But the one grand motive which beyond all others 
impelled him to his work, was a conviction that the voice of 
God bade him go forth. No man in this world acts on a single 
or simple motive, and persistent courageous work extorts the 
admiration and honor of men, though its motive is not of the 



AKD THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 129 

noblest. That no lower motive than the simple approbation 
of God influenced Howard, we can not assert ; but we do de- 
liberately think that, of the sons of men, few, or perhaps none, 
have acted more purely on the highest motive. " Howard is 
a beautiful philanthropist, eulogized by Burke, and, in most 
men's minds, a sort of beatified individual. How glorious, 
having fmished off one's affairs in Bedfordshire, or, in fact, find- 
ing them very dull, inane, and worthy of being quitted and got 
away from, to set out on a cruise over the jails, first of Britain, 
then, finding that answer, over the jails of the habitable globe ! 
' A voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity ; to 
collate distresses, to gauge wretchedness, to take the dimensions 
of human misery :' — really, it is very fine." In what precise 
manner these words are intended to define or sarcastically 
jDoint at Howard's impulses in undertaking his work, we care 
not positively to determine. But it is surely fair to consider 
them as calculated to convey an impression, that in choosing 
his work he had at least some thought of the " glorious " aspect 
it would bear in the eyes of men, how grand it would look, 
and how much men would talk about it. Now we venture to 
assert, appealing to bare and unassailable facts, that in few in- 
stances recorded in human history, perhaps hardly in any, could 
such an impression be more profoundly incorrect ; that How- 
ard's eye was closed, as scarce ever human eye was closed, to 
every influence within the atmosphere of earth ; that he looked, 
with a silent earnestness whose intensity was sublime, for his 
approbation and reward, into the eye of God. In this highest 
of all regards we scruple not to name him with the holiest of 
men, with Moses, Daniel, and John. 

lu answering our third question. How did he perform his 
work, which must be done at somewhat greater length, light is 
cast on the former two. We come to look at Howard in his 
C* 



130 HOWARD ; 

actual operations. To detail his several journeys in Great 
Britain and on the I'Jontinent, is indeed impossible here ; nor is 
the attempt in any respect called for ; the main outlines of his 
work can be sketched, and its general spirit displayed, in a few 
comprehensive glances. 

About the close of the year 1778, there might have been 
seen, on the high-roads of the counties adjoining to Bedford, a 
gentleman on horseback, followed by his servant, traveling, at 
the rate of forty miles a-day. At every town where he rested, 
he visited the jail. There was no fuss or hurry in his motions, 
he never lost a moment, he never gave a moment too little to 
the business in hand, nothing escaped his eye, and there was no 
spot into which he did not penetrate. He went into places 
where the noisome and pestilential air compelled him to draw 
his breath short, where deadly contagion lurked, where phy- 
sicians refused to follow him ; unagitated yet earnest, he meas- 
ured every dungeon, explored every particular respecting fare, 
accommodation, and fees, inquired after the prevalence of dis- 
ease, with the means adopted for its prevention, and learned 
in every instance the relation which the criminals held to those 
who superintended and kept the jail. He rested not until he 
had gone east and west, until he had carried his researches 
over the jails of Britain and of Europe, until he could credibly 
declare what was the state of the prisons of the world. That 
gentleman was John Howard. Was the scene which discov- 
ered itself to his eye such as confirms the idea that the time 
had arrived when an offense against God and man was no 
longer to be endured, and rays of light, as just as beneficent, 
to be cast into dungeons that had long been seen only by 
Heaven 1 

A few simple facts, illustrative likewise of Howard's mode 
of working, shaH be our reply. 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 131 

He saw prevailing far and wide in England, that palpable 
and cruel injustice wliicli first set him on his journeying ; men 
declared guiltless were still laid in the dungeon. He found 
that in the same land it was possible for one whose neighbor 
owed him a paltry sum, to deprive that neighbor of his lib- 
erty, and subject himself and his family to every thing short of 
absolute starvation : nay, to starvation itself, if it was spread 
over months instead of days. He found still under the kindly 
skies of that free, enlightened, and religious country, that it 
was possible for men to be farmed by a fellow-man, and fed 
from such a miserable pittance of money, that they must have 
suffered the perpetual gnawings of hunger. He found dens or 
holes under ground, of dimensions such as might have held 
one wild animal, where several human beings were flung, to 
gasp and groan the night long. In some, the heat and close- 
ness must have been stifling, in some, the floors were wet and 
the walls dripping, in some, open and reeking sewers poisoned 
the air ; all that is noisome and revolting in gross uncleanness 
lay bare to his sickened but unflinching gaze. Death, he dis- 
covered, had here a realm of his ov*'n, where he escaped the eye 
of justice and humanity. From time immemorial, uncured and 
uncared for, a virulent fever dwelt in those dreary abodes ; 
it had a character of its own ; it was the progeny and it seemed 
the genius of the place ; it was called the jail-fever. There, in 
darkness, famine, and loathsome horrors, it preyed on those 
victims who were handed over to it, and whose life-strength 
was broken by shame, sorrow, and despair ; like a foul, and 
cruel, and insatiable vulture, which men permitted to tear out 
the hearts of their brethren, chained in the depths of dungeons. 
Year by year, its victims were counted by the score and the 
hundred ; many of these mere debtors, and few of them proved 
guilty ; a grave and notable fact, slight it who will, if nations 



132 HOWARD ; 

are answerable to God for the blood they ihed ! Nc r was the 
jail-fever alone ; the sniall-pox raged fiercely, and the malignity 
of every other forni of disease was heightened; the want of air, 
the damp vapors, the insufficient food, and other causes, too 
many to recount, exaggerated every tendency to consumption, 
rheumatism, palsy, and other nameless ailments. He found 
that not only the body was delivered over, bound hand and 
foot, to pestilence and famine, but that every soul which entered 
those dens seemed actually handed over to the evil power. All 
the maladies which can infect the mind still partially pure, when 
villainy recounts and gloats over its crimes, finding its only 
recreation in the exercise, spread their contagion there; vrhile 
'drinking, swearing, gambling, and indecency, were the appro- 
priate accompaniments and aids in the work. The jail-fever 
was not the worst enemy men encountered in a prison. 

The cases of individual woe which Howard savv, may be im- 
agined, but can not be detailed ; they were such as might have 
wrung forth tears of blood : pale and haggard faces on which 
the light had not looked until its glare pained the glazed and 
hollow eye, spirits broken, hearts hopeless, ghastly beings who 
had, long years ago, left all the paths where comfort encour- 
ages, and better prospects smile, however faintly, in the dis- 
tance, and who now stood fronting mankind with demoniac 
scowl, in the gaunt defiance of despair ; men who, for small 
debts, after long years died in prison, fathers sustained in their 
dreary confinement by the families whose main support they 
had hitherto been, and several of whose younger members 
dropped at the time significantly into the grave, women lying 
desolate, far from every friendly eye, from every cheering word, 
and dying of incurable disease ; brother mortals driven mad by 
anguish, whose cries attracted the passer-by. Such were the 
sights which, in the course of his various journeys over Eug- 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 133 

land and the world, John Howard saw. Had the time come 
for phihmthropy '? 

Howard had not long been engaged in his work, ere the re- 
port of it reached the House of Commons. The House had been 
lately concerning itself with such things, and Howard was 
called to give evidence regarding what he had seen. His an- 
swers were deemed clear and satisfactory, and he formally re- 
ceived the thanks of the House. One honorable member, how- 
ever, hearing of his long and expensive circuits, and finding the 
idea new to him that such things should be done without cash 
payment, begged to be informed whether he had" traveled at 
his own expense. The man to whom he put the question was 
no sentimentalist, but that question touched him in his very 
heart ; indignation, and contempt, and the tears of outraged 
modesty, seem to have blended with scorn, as he spurned the 
unconscious compliment of Mammon. 

In the course of the year 1774, two bills were passed : one 
abolished the injustice relating to the fees, the other had refer- 
ence to the health of prisoners. Howard said nothing, but, in 
his own way, had them both printed at his expense, and sent 
one to every jailer in the kingdom. 

About the close of the same year he was requested to stand 
candidate for the borough of Bedford. He acceded to the re- 
quest, and very narrowly missed his seat. He imputed his 
failure to government influence ; and, however this may have 
been, we learn from his words on the occasion, that he was by 
no means a man who concerned himself alone with village 
politics, or slavishly pursued one idea. He had cast his eyes 
on the awakening motions of the great western giant, and 
boldly avowed his opposition to part of the policy adopted 
toward America. He also openly and emphatically declared 
that, if elected, he would never accept of five shillings of 



134 HOWARD ; 

emolument. He felt the loss of his seat somewhat deeply, but 
as usual, resigned himself with perfect calmness to the disposal 
of Providence. 

Meanwhile, his peculiar work had not been abandoned. In 
no degree agitated by the result of the election, he set out for 
Scotland and Ireland, and prosecuted still further his re- 
searches in England. He was just a month at home about the 
election business ; in noting his method of going about his 
work here, one hardly sees wherein his " energy" was specially 
" slow." 

Having looked with his own eyes into the prisons of Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Ireland, he sat down, in the beginning of 
1775, in his house at Cardington, to arrange his materials for 
the press, and offer to the world such suggestions as he now 
felt himself in a position to give. But a thought struck him. 
There were other prisons in the world besides those of Britain ; 
on the Continent of Europe might not new miseries be seen, 
and might not valuable hints be obtained? The fact was 
palpable ; but then it delayed the work, and was so tedious. 
Howard calmly laid aside his papers, got ready his traveling 
gear, and set out for the Continent. There was " slow" energy 
here ; and of a particularly valuable sort. 

Howard's first journey in the inspection of Continental pris- 
ons lay through France, Holland^ part of Flanders, Germany, 
and Switzerland. His researches were conducted in his usual 
way — quietly, quickly, thoroughly ; his sense of justice mark- 
ing every abuse, his sagacity noting every excellence. He did 
not travel so far without seeing misery, and here again comfort 
and hope went along with him into many a weary dungeon ; 
but the general glance at Continental prisons afforded revela- 
tions which redounded to the unquestionable honor of the Con- 
tinent, and the shame of Britain. It is true that he did not 



AND Til 111 RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 135 

gain access to the severest form of confinement in France ; 
his daring attempt to enter the Bastile was foiled ; it is true, 
likewise, that he did discover traces of torture such as was not 
known in England. But, in cleanliness, order, and the general 
characteristic of being cared for, the Continental jails had the 
clear superiority. In Holland, at that time, to all appearance, 
the most orderly and internally prosperous kingdom of Eu- 
rope, he saw in operation a system of management of crimi- 
nals, in its main outlines, wise and humane. And the jail-fever 
existed only in Britain ! 

On returning from the Continent, he applied himself to the 
publication of his work on Prisons. Plis friends Aiken and 
Price assisted him in arranging his matter and securing literary 
correctness. The book w^as printed at Warrington. It was 
severe winter weather, yet Howard was always up by two in 
;he morning, revising proof-sheets ; at eight, he was at the 
printing-office, having just dressed for the day and breakfasted ; 
here he remained till one, when the men went to dinner ; he 
then retired to his adjoining lodgings, and taking in his hand 
some bread and raisins, or other dried fruit, generally walked 
for a little in the outskirts of the town, calling probably on a 
friend. The printers by this time had returned, and proceed- 
ing to the printing-office, he continued there until work was 
over. Still untired, he went then to look over with Aiken the 
sheets put together by the latter during the day. His supper 
consisted of a cup of tea or coffee, and he retired to rest at 
ten or half-past ten. 

The book published by Howard requires no comment. It 
is a type of his work ; accurate, substantial, valuable, but de- 
void of every thing allied, even most distantly, to adornment. 
It is rather a book of statistics than any thing else, and as 
such there can be no doubt it was mainly regarded by him- 



136 HO WAUD ; 

self; the facts of the case were wanted, and these he gave. It 
was published in 1777, and additions were made, at several 
subse'^^uent periods. 

In the course of the same year, by the death of his sister, 
he inherited £15,000. This addition to the means at his com- 
mand he resolved to devote entirely to the prosecution of that 
task which he believed to have been appointed him by God. 
He knew his son to be amply provided for, even though his 
patirimonial estate was encroached upon ; but this enabled him 
to leave that estate untouched. Howard did his work not 
merely without cash payment ; he devoted to it every farthing 
he could conscientiously expend. 

For several years now his course does not demand a detailed 
account. He went on calmly and indefatigably, ever widening 
the range of his excursions, and ever rendering more perfect 
what he had already done. Again and again, he visited the 
prisons of England, Scotland, and Ireland ; again and again, he 
swept over the Continent, the speed of his journeys equaled 
only by the thoroughness of his work. He had in every re- 
spect attained perfect adaptation to this last. By long and 
vigorous temperance, entire abstinence from animal food and 
intoxicating liquors, and a constant use of the bath, his early 
weakness of frame seems to have been exchanged for a consid- 
erable hardiness; he inured himself to do without sleep to 
such an extent, that, on his journeys, one night in three, and 
that taken sometimes in his carriage, sufficed ; so perfectly sim- 
ple was his fare, that he could, without boasting, profess him- 
self able to subsist wherever men were to be found, wherever 
the earth yielded bread and water. The tourist in the High- 
lands of Scotland might have seen him stopping at the cabin by 
the wayside to obtain a little milk ; among the mountains of 
Sweden he pushed on, undaunted and tireless, living on sour 



AND TPIE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 137 

bread and sour milk ; on the bleak plains of Russia, his lean 
and somewhat sallow face, and small spare figure, might have 
been marked as he dashed past in his light carriage ; he w^as 
on the high roads of France, in the mountain gorges of Switz- 
erland, tossing on the Mediterranean or the Adriatic. Never 
did he tarry, never did he haste, never was he moved from his 
deliberate and wakeful calmness. No personal duty was ne- 
glected. His son he always carefully remembered, having him 
near him at all needful and proper seasons, and diligently in- 
quiring after the best instructors and guardians, to whose care 
to commit him. The little cottages of Cardington were not 
forgotten. These grew ever more numerous, and their inmates 
were well remembered ; the work of alleviating the sorrow 
of the world did not prevent the little drops of comfort, which 
had gladdened them while their kind landlord dwelt beside, 
from falling within them still. And w^herever Howard was, it 
was impossible for men not to discern wherein lay the secret 
of his indefatigable perseverance, his unwavering valor, his 
perpetual calm. In whatever land he was, and amid what ob- 
servers soever, he never forgot or hesitated to join in evening 
prayer with his attendant ; the door was shut, and the master 
and servant knelt down together as if at home in quiet Car- 
dington. For his own exertions, his one reason was, that he 
believed himself doing the will of God ; for the disposal of 
all events he trusted, with the simplicity of a little child, and 
the faith of a Hebrew patriarch, to the immediate power of 
Jehovah. He passes by contending armies ; we mark a shud- 
der going over his frame, but we see him also lift his eye up- 
ward, and comfort himself with the knowledge that God is 
sitting King over the floods : he enters dungeons where others 
shrink back from the tainted air ; duty, he says, has sent him 
there, and Providence can preserve him : he is cast on a bed 



138 HOWARD ; 

of pain and languor ; he bows submission to the chastening 
hand of his Father, or bends his head, and asks wherefore He 
contendeth with him. Men look upon him with various feel- 
ings. The cold, the hard, the cruel, scorn the whole enterprise ; 
the worshipers of Mammon look on amazed, scarce finding 
heart to sneer ; gradually, from all lands, there begins to rise 
a sound of approbation and acclaim. Howard hears neither 
sneers nor acclamations : he listens for the voice which seems 
to the world to be altogether silent. 

As our eye follows him during these years, it is impossible 
not to discern a remarkable dexterity and adroitness in carry- 
ing through whatever business presents itself — a quick percep- 
tion of what the case demands — a sure sagacity in providing 
against it — a certain ready adaptation to circumstances, and 
swift assumption of the character necessary for the occasion ; 
all which it really seems difficult to reconcile with dullness. 
Let us briefly make good our words. 

Look at him, for instance, in that visit to Russia, in which 
he excited the interest, and was invited to the court of Catha- 
rine. 

Unbroken by the toils and hardships undergone in Sweden, 
where not even tolerable milk could be obtained to put into 
his unfailing tea, he arrives in the neighborhood of St. Peters- 
burg. Forgetful of nothing, and conscious that his fame now 
goes before him, and is apt to interfere with his work, he leaves 
his carriage in the neighborhood, and enters the town privately. 
The empress, however, has marked him, and sends a messen- 
ger to invite him to the palace. Here is clearly a call to the 
highest distinction and applause, to become the observed of all 
observers, in the smile of one whose smile secures that of all 
others : if there is observable weakness, even pardonable v/eak 
ness, in his nature, if the appearance of his work, in the eyes 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 139 

of men, does sensibly affect him, here is a case for the quiet 
gratification of the hidden feeling, without the likelihood, nay, 
the possibility, of its ever being called in question. There are 
positive arguments, too, which seem plausible enough. The 
empress may be won to a special interest in prisons, philan- 
thropy may kindle itself in the court, what unconceived good 
may shape itself out therefrom is not to be measured. Howard 
looks at the invitation with his cool, piercing English eye, 
flashing at once through all plausibilities into the heart of the 
matter ; he feels instinctively that his work is in the dungeon, 
and not the palace, and that to encircle it with a blaze of pub- 
licity will probably interfere with the positive rugged task he 
has appointed himself: he refuses the invitation. 

Once in St. Petersburg, he is soon at his work. 

He has heard very much of the humanity of the Russian 
criminal arrangements, and for one thing, it has been boasted 
to him that capital punishment is here abolished. His strong 
instinctive sagacity doubts the fact. But how attain a knowl- 
edge of the truth 1 All authorities simply give the bland as- 
surance that it is so ; the published codes bear witness to the 
same ; how can one get past what is said and seen, to be as- 
sured there is no discordance between that and the actual inner 
fact 1 Howard hires a hackney coach, and drives to the house 
of the man who inflicts the knout. This first precaution is 
necessary to remove all appearance of being a stranger. He 
enters quickly, wearing a purpose-like, business-like look, as of 
one who is in the simple discharge of his duty. The man eyes 
him with astonishment, and somewhat of fear. Howard ad- 
dresses him, soothingly but firmly ; no evil is intended toward 
him, he has but to answer, clearly and at once, the questions 
about tc be put. Howard's look is cool and adroit ; the 
Russian s all submission and complaisance : the colloquy com- 



140 HOWARD ; 

mences : — " Can you inflict the knout in such a manner as to 
occasion death in a short time f — " Yes, I can." — " In how 
short a time 1" — " In a day or two." — " Have you ever so in- 
flicted it r'-^" I have."—" Have you lately f— " Yes ; the last 
man who was punished with my hands by the knout died of 
the punishment. " — " In what manner do you thus render it 
mortal 1" — " By one or more strokes on the sides, which carry 
oflT large pieces of flesh." — " Do you receive orders thus to in- 
flict the punishment f — " I do." The brief, soldier-like inquiry 
is completed ; not a point has been omitted ; Ploward is satis- 
fied, and departs. ' The elaborate cloaking of Russian policy, 
the infernal cruelty masked under the diabolic smile, has been 
penetrated by the simple, plain-looking Englishman, now ap- 
proaching his sixtieth year. 

While prosecuting his researches in St. Petersburg, over- 
come by his exertions in Sweden, and aflected probably by the 
climate, Howard is seized with the ague. He has no time to 
spare ; his work waits at Moscow ; he procures a light car- 
riage, and sets out. The ague is still on him, but his strong 
spirit shakes it away ; he travels it oflT. The journey to Mos- 
cow is five hundred miles ; in less than five days he is there, 
his clothes having never been off since starting. He enters 
Moscow as calmly as if returning from a drive in the suburbs, 
and is instantly at work. Such is the old man's way — " the 
dull, solid Ploward." 

Consider, again, that tour in France, when he was forbidden 
to pass the frontiers. The interdict is strict. He has seriously 
offended the French Court by plain truths, and researches not 
to be balked- He ponders the circumstances with his usual 
calmness ; duty seems to speak clearly ; he resolves to enter 
France. He assumes the disguise of a physician — having form- 
erly acquired some knowledge of medicine — adroitly escapes 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. l4l 

arrest in Paris, and on the streets of Toulon foots it trippingly 
as a French exquisite. He attains his object, and leaves France 
by sea. In the face of the French Government he has crossed 
the country, and made what observations seemed to him good. 
Whatever may be said of the achievement, it surely does not 
look like that of the mere shiftless mechanical workman. 

In more private instances, the case was similar. He visits 
the Justitia hulk. The captain brings him a biscuit as sample 
of the provisions ; it is as wholesome as could be wished. How- 
ard puts it in his pocket. All necessary information seems to 
have been obtained, yet he lingers ; there is one on board who 
wishes he would take himself off. He has, in fact, been mak- 
ing observations in his own way ; his eyes are open as well as 
his ears. He remarks that things have a tawdry, disordered 
look, that the prisoners are sickly and tattered, that there are 
several things here which the captain's relation, so frankly given, 
by no means embraces. Accordingly he waits. At length the 
messes are weighed out, Howard looking on quite calm, but 
with something of expectation in his face. Here come the bis- 
cuits ; they are in broken bits, green and moldy ; there is no 
longer any mystery in the pallid looks of the crew. It is now 
Howard's turn to speak. Out comes the wholesome satisfac- 
tory biscuit, it is held up before captain and crew, beside the 
green loathsome fragments, and Howard indignantly rebukes 
the former for his cruelty and falsehood. We can conceive the 
brightening of the eyes of the crew as they stand by in amaze- 
ment. If you say Howard was slow and heavy, it might be 
well to mention how he could have done his work better : if it 
appears that he was a quick, indefatigable, effective worker, it 
might be well, we say once more, to consider to what extent 
biographic vails of dust and cobwebs may hide the clear, strong 
lines in the face of a man. 



142 HOWARD ; 

We do not assert that Howard was a man of very remark- 
able intellectual power. That in every mental exertion con- 
nected with words, that in every thing relating to expression of 
thought or narration of action he was naturally devoid of un- 
common, perhaps even of ordinary, faculty, we at once concede : 
the only question which admits of discussion is, whether, in 
that power of action, that faculty of perceiving and doing the 
thing needful, with closed or stuttering lips, which has been 
recognized as characteristically English, he was not so far su- 
perior to the common run of men that his title can be vindi- 
cated to a really remarkable endowment ; whether, with what 
difference soever, he was not cut from that same hard stratum 
of the Erzgebirge rock from which have come the silent Saxon 
Clives and Wellingtons. He himself estimated his powers 
very low. " I am the plodder," he said, *' who goes about to 
collect material for men of genius to make use of" And cer- 
tainly the special honor we claim for Howard is not intellect- 
ual. " How often," to use again his own humble words, " hav, 
we seen that important events have arisen from weak instru 
ments;" perhaps, for once, it was right in the human race to 
set among its honored and immortal heroes one whose highest 
glory was his humility, whose greatest strength was his weak- 
ness. Yet we must think it were a difficult thing to prove tliat 
he did not possess a high talent of the working order. Thur- 
low was very much struck with the sagacity he displayed in 
an interview he had with him ; when clearly set before the eye 
as they were done, and not as they have been narrated, his 
actions do not wear any aspect of slowness, dullness, or mere 
mechanical gyration ; the work he had to do required not high 
intellectual power, but what it did require he fully displayed. 
Once only does he seem to have failed, or at least to have 
abandoned an attempt ere effecting the work proposed; he was 



4.ND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 143 

appointed supervisor of certain penitentiary establishments 
which Avere to be erected, and after a time resigned the post. 
But here he was at once hampered by interference, and re- 
strained from the work which he deemed specially his own ; 
perhaps resignation was the most decided, manly, and appro- 
priate course open in the circumstances. What Howard might 
have been in action, had he, in early life, been placed in a sit- 
uation to exercise an important influence on his fellow-men, we 
need not inquire ; yet we must urge the question, whether, con- 
sidering the long-sustained activity, the inevitable observation, 
the iron decision, the quick adroitness, which a survey of his 
career displays, it is really a safe assertion that he possessed 
by nature no power of vrork, define it as you will, which made 
him remarkable among men, and would have secured him 
credit, if not fame, in whatever situation he had been placed. 

Howard's two last journeys to the continent claim a more 
particular notice than the others. We must, however, still be 
brief 

When he had been long engaged in the work of investigat- 
ing the state of prisons, and that task had been approximately 
accomplished all over Europe, it became apparent to him that 
yet another service was appointed him. He had looked upon 
one great portion of the human race, which most men forget 
and despise as having no claim upon them ; he now turned to 
look upon another, whose claim upon their brethren is also 
negative rather than positive, who are held to their hearts 
solely by the claims of pity ; — the sick and diseased of the hu- 
man family. This other great dumb class was to find an ad- 
vocate in Howard ; he aspired to perform the twofold angelic 
office of bringing hope to the prisoner, and healing to the 
sick. 

About this time, menacing E\irope from the East, lying 



144 HOWARD ; 

along its borders like the purple cloud which wraps the Samiel, 
the destroying pestilence, named by distinction the Plague, 
seems to have attracted special attention. That slight and 
sallow man, who had struggled, his life long, with sickness, 
whose face was as that of a hermit in a wilderness, who was 
slow of speech, and upon whose head had now fliUen the snows 
of nearly threescore winters, marked that Samiel-cloud from 
afar. He saw it coming slowly, resistlessly on, strewing its 
way with pallid corpses, taking the smile from off the faces of 
the nations. He thought it possible that, by entering its shade 
he might learn the secret of its baneful energy, and save some 
of his fellow-creatures from its power. He thought he heard 
the voice of his God bidding him go ; he looked calmly from 
his quiet island home toward Asia and the jEgean, and went. 
Other diseases were to meet him on the way, the lazar-houses 
of Europe were embraced in his enterprise, but the great 
Plague, like the monarch of the baleful host, was the ultimate, 
and gradually the principal foe with which the weak John How- 
ard was to contend. 

Passing over the previous stages of his journey, we find him, 
in the summer of 1786. in Constantinople. Here he visited 
the hospitals and lazarettos, every den and stronghold of the 
plague ; as he entered, a pain smote him across the forehead, 
continuing for an hour after he left ; his conductors drew back 
in fear, lie saw what was oppressing to soul and sense ; yet he 
never flinched, never abandoned that calm, heaven-lit look, 
which nought on earth could darken or abash, never stopped 
till his task was done. 

This once accomplished, he prepared to return to Vienna. 
But he paused ; a thought had struck him — he could not pro- 
ceed. The prison-world he had entered solely as a visitor ; in 
no other capacity was there a possibility of doing so. But was 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 145 

not the case altered here? Was there not a way of learning 
the secrets of lazarettos more thorough than that of mere in- 
spection and hearsay ? There was, and Howard saw it. Yet 
the condition was stern. It was, that he should enter a lazaret- 
to, and, confined himself, learn, beyond possibility of deception, 
the state and feelings of its inmates. The old man deliberately 
accepted the condition, and proceeded to enter a lazaretto. 
From Constantinople he sailed for Smyrna, chose there a ves- 
sel with a foul bill of health, and departed for Venice. On 
leaving the Morea, where the vessel took in water, they were 
borne down upon by a Tunisian pirate, and a fight ensued. To 
the astonishment of the crew, Howard stood by perfectly calm 
At length the pirate seemed about to prevail. As a last resort, 
the Turks loaded their largest cannon to the muzzle with nails, 
spikes, and what destructive missiles could be found. Howard 
stepped forward, seeing, probably, that the men mismanaged 
the matter, and coolly pointed the gun on the enemy's deck ; 
the volley burst out, carrying death among their crew, and, as 
the smoke rolled along the sea, the pirate was seen hoisting 
sail, and bearing away. The voyage proved long and stormy. 
For two months Howard was tossed about, alone in wild, dan- 
gerous weather ; yet he bore a brave heart through it all : — 
" I well remember," he says, " I had a good night, when, one 
evening, my cabin-biscuits, &c., were floated with water ; and 
thinking I should be some hours in drying it up, I went to bed 
to forget it."' 

Arriving at Venice, he found he had to spend two months in 
the lazaretto. He was first put into a loathsome room, 
"without table, chair, or bed," and swarming with vermin. 
He hired a person to cleanse it, and the operation occupied two 
days, yet it remained offensive ; headache, caused by the tainted 
air and infected walls, perpetually tormented him. From his 

7 



146 HOWARD ; 

first apartment he was, after some time, removed to another 
as bad as the former. Here, in the division of the apartment 
where he was to sleep, he was " almost surrounded with water," 
and found a dry spot on which to fix his bed only by kindling 
a large fire on the flags. Six days he remained in the new 
quarter. Once more he was removed, and this time there ap- 
peared a possibility of improvement. His new apartment was 
indeed unfurnished, filthy, and " as offensive as the sick wards 
of the worst hospitals." But the water and the vermin seem to 
have disappeared. The rooms, however, were fall of contagion, 
for they had not been cleaned from time immemorial, and 
though Howard had been washed again and again with warm 
water, he found his appetite failing, and that a slow fever was 
beginning to fasten upon him. But he was on no theatrical 
mission, and would die at his post only when all remedy ab- 
solutely failed him ; his stout English heart had never yet 
fainted ; and here, again, we meet the difficulties of the theory 
touching his slow and shiftless dullness. With the aid of the 
English consul, he obtained brushes and lime ; his attendant — 
for a consideration — assisted him in manufacturing whitewash ; 
despite the prejudices of the observers, he rose up three hours 
before his guard, and commenced, along with his former assist- 
ant, to whitewash his apartment. He resolved to lock up his 
guard if he interfered ; we are almost sorry the man did not, 
for most certainly Howard would have kept to his determina- 
tion. He did not. however, and the only result was, that all 
who passed by looked with astonishment at the whitened and 
wholesome walls, where so many had been contented to pine 
and repine, with no attempt at cure. 

The days in the Venice lazaretto rolled slowly on, wearisome, 
dismal, unvar3ang ; Howard watched every thing, knew every 
thing, and felt the weariness he longed to relieve. His faith 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 147 

failed not ; with calm and easy feelings he looked forward to 
the term of his confinement. But suddenly there, came a 
change : darker clouds than had ever yet cast their shadow 
over him took their course toward that dreary lazaretto. On 
the 11th of October, 1786, he received letters from England, 
with two pieces of information. The one was, that his son 
was following evil courses, and dashing wildly on in a path 
whose end, dimly indicated to the father, must be one of the 
deepest darkness : the other that a movement was proceeding 
in England, under high and promising auspices, for the erection 
of a monument to himself Not hearing, at first, the worst 
concerning his son, he wrote home with deep sorrow, yet in 
hope. The proposal for a monument next required his atten- 
tion. An English gentleman had formerly had an interview 
with Howard at Rome of an hour's length, and the result was 
an admiration on the part of the former which knew no bounds. 
On his return to England he had proposed, through the columns 
of the " Gentleman's Magazine," that a public monument should 
be erected to one whom he styled " the most truly glorious 
of human beings." The widespread and profound admiration 
for Howard which, ere this time, had sunk into the British 
mind, had thus found vent ; at once the proposal had taken 
effect, and the movement was headed by certain noblemen. 
With astonishment it was heard that Howard wrote, absolutely 
refusing the honor, and alleging that its idea gave him exquisite 
pain. At first this w^as thought a graceful mode of acceptance, 
or at least a struggle of excessive modesty, easily to be over- 
borne ; but the fact was soon put beyond dispute. Even after 
long arguing and urging by intimate and honored friends, he 
decidedly and unalterably refused his consent. From the la- 
zaretto of Venice, he wrote to his friend Mr. Smith of Bedford, 
rehearsing the directions he had given ere quitting Cardington 



148 HOWARD ; 

respecting his obsequies ; his words were as follows, we copy 
them with no alteration and with no comment : — 

" (a) As to my burial, not to exceed ten pounds. 
"(b) My tomb to be a plain slab of marble, placed under that of my 
dear Harriet's in Cardington Churcli, with this inscription : — 

"John Howard, died , aged — . 

" 'My hope is in Christ.' " 

Some time after, in gratefal and courteous terms, he signified 
to his well-wishers in England, that his resolution was fixed, 
and that he would accept no public mark of approbation what- 
ever. 

Let this fact be fully and calmdy considered ; and let it then 
be said whether what we have alleged regarding Howard's 
grand motive in his work, is other than the bare and faintly- 
expressed truth. For himself he would have no glory. Jle 
accept honor from men, who was the weakest of instruments, 
and whose highest honor it was that he was worthy to be made 
an instrument at all in the hand of God ! He stop to be 
crowned by men, whom the Almighty had honored with His 
high command, and permitted to give strength and comfort for 
Him ! Jle listen to the applause of the nations, whom his in- 
most heart knew to be weak and unworthy, and whose most 
inspiring yet indestructible hope it was, that he might be num- 
bered even among the least in the kingdom of heaven ! The 
people seemed in loud acclaim to say. Thou hast brought us 
water out of the rock : Howard, with eager face, and out- 
stretched hand, and heart pained to the quick, cried out, I have 
done nothing, I deserve nothing ; God has done all. 

Eeleased from the lazaretto, and after spending a week in 
Venice, Howard proceeded by sea to Trieste, and thence to 
Vienna. During this time, the fever he had averted for a time 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 149 

continued to creep over him, the whole air of the hizaretto 
having been infected ; it greatly impaired his strength, and the 
accounts, deepening in sadness, which reached him respecting 
his son, made his affliction almost too heavy to be borne : " I 
am reduced by fatigue of body and mind, I have great reason 
to bless God my resolution does not forsake me in so many 
solitary hours." It did not forsake him, it remained firm as a 
rock in vexed surge, it could ever raise its head into the pure 
light of God's smile ; but human faith has not often been so 
sorely tried. In the letter written from Vienna, from which 
the above words were taken, he referred in approving terms to 
the conduct toward his son of several domestics w^hom he left 
at Cardington, expressed his persuasion that it arose out of re- 
gard to his mother, and concluded the paragraph in these 
words : — " Who I rejoice is deadP He often thought of Har- 
riet, and we may conceive that now, in his extreme sorrow, 
the old days would flit past him robed in the still and melan- 
choly light of memory ; that tender and to him beautiful wife 
seemed to return, to lean over him in his loneliness and sickness 
of heart ; but he thought of his son, and the tear which started 
to his own eye was transferred by imagination to that of his 
Harriet, where perchance he had never seen one before ; then 
love arose and triumphed over anguish, and he blessed God 
that his best beloved was lying still. Has art ever surpassed 
the pathos of these words ? 

Early in 1787, Howard was again in England, proceeding to 
make arrangements respecting his son. The latter was 
hopeless maniac. He appears to have been of that common 
class of young men, whom strong passions, weak judgments, 
and good-natured, silly facility, render a prey to those who 
combine artfulness with vice. A servant in whom Howard 
placed absolute confidence betrayed his trust infamously, al- 



160 HOWARD ; 

lured his charge into evil, and excited in his breast contempt 
for his father. That father, ever most anxious to provide him 
the best and safest superintendence and tuition, had sent him 
to prosecute his education at Edinburgh, where he resided with 
Dr. Black. There it was that prolonged habits of vice fatally 
impaired his constitution, and after a period he became de- 
ranged. In this condition, watched over with all the care and 
kindness which his father's efforts could secure, he lingered for 
a considerable number of years, and died. It was a most touch- 
ing case ; for he seems not to have been without that gleam of 
nobleness which so often accompanies and adorns a character 
intellectually by no means strong. In Edinburgh once, when 
some one spoke disresjoectfully of his father, and basely hinted 
that his philanthropic expenses might impair the fortunes of 
his son, young Howard indignantly resented the insinuation, 
and asked how he could ever do so much good with the money 
as his father. 

Howard now remained in England for about two years, 
seeing his son provided for as well as was possible, and pre- 
paring the result of his late travels for the press. His religion 
still continued to deepen and grow more fervent, the feeling 
of the littleness of his efforts and powers to increase. The few 
private memoranda that remain of the period breathe an earnest 
and habitual devotion ; there is an occasional flash of clear in- 
tellectual insight and moral ardor ; but, most of all, they are 
characterized by humility. " Examples of tremendous wrath 
will be held up, and what if I should be among these examples." 
" Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer Thee, oh my God ; I 
have no claim on Thy bounty but what springs from the be- 
nignity of Thy nature. God forbid that I should glory save 
in the cross of Jesus Christ." "A few of God's people that 
met in an upper room appear, in my eye, greater than all the 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 151 

Roman empire. God kept them." "Where there is most 
holiness, there is most humility. Never does our understand- 
ing shine miore than when it is employed in religion. In cer- 
tain circumstances retirement is criminal ; with a holy fire I 
would proceed." " Ease, affluence, and honors, are tempta- 
tions, which the ivorld holds out — but remember, ' the fashion 
of this world passeth away' — on the other hand, fatigue, 
poverty, sufferings, and dangers, with an approving conscience. 
Oh God ! my heart is fixed, trusting in thee ! My God ! Oh 
glorious words ! there is a treasure ! in comparison of which 
all things in this world are dross." 

England was now for Howard all hung as it were in weeds 
of mourning. The hope to which he had clung that his son 
might cheer him in his old age had vanished utterly, or at least 
the term when such might be possible could not be fixed. 
There were probably in this world few sadder hearts at that 
time than John Howard's. But he had not yet discovered the 
secret of the plague ; there was still work for mercy to do : it 
was now perhaps the greatest happiness of which he was ca- 
pable to go upon that work. And he went ; the weary heart to 
soothe and heal the weary-hearted ; one of the saddest men in 
England, to meet the plague. 

On the 27th of September, 1789, he was at Moscow. He 
seemed now to feel that his end was not far, and we find him 
engaged in solemn transactions with his God. He brought out 
that old dedication of himself to his Maker, which we saw him 
subscribe in the days when his life had first been darkened, and 
when the terrors of the Almighty, which had rolled like low 
cloudy masses over his soul, were just being suffused with 
celestial radiance in the full beaming out of the Sun of Right- 
eousness. Again he owned his entire unworthiness and his 
entire weakness, again he looked up to the Rock of Ages, again 



152 HOWARD ; 

he gave up his soul, spirit, and body, forever and ever, to 
God. As we gather, too, from the pages of Brown, he looked 
again on that covenant which his beloved had made with her 
Father in heaven : we think we can see the old and weary man 
gazing over its lines, while a tear steals from his eye, a tear of 
lonely sadness, yet touched with one gleam of light, from the 
thought that it will not now be long ere he again meet his 
Harriet. This was in the September of 1789 : it was his last 
pause on his hard life-journey, his last draught of living waters 
from those fountains which divine Love never permits to dry 
up in the desert of the world : again he arose and went on his 
way, but now the pearly gates and the golden ^alls stood 
before the eye of faith, calm, beautiful, eternal, on the near 
horizon. 

In the beginning of January, 1790, he was residing at Kher- 
son, a village on the Dnieper, near the Crimea, still as of old 
with indefatigable resolution and kindness pursuing his work. 
In visiting a young lady dying of a fever the infection seized 
him, and he soon felt that death was upon him. On his death- 
bed he was just what we have always known him. We hear 
the voice of prayer for his son, of inextinguishable pity for the 
afflicted, and, concerning himself, these words addressed to his 
friend Admiral Priestman, " Let me beg of you, as you value 
your old friend, not to suffer any pomp to be used at my fu- 
neral, nor any monument, nor monumental inscription whatso- 
ever, to mark where I am laid : but lay me quietly in the 
earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten." 
Thus, with the same calm, saintly smile, so still but so im- 
movable, which he had worn during, life, he passed away. 

AH nations had now heard of Howard, and all nations hon- 
ored him : England, in silent pride, placed his statue in St. 



AND THE B^SE OF PHILANTHROPY. 153 

Pai-l's Cathedral. Tliere he remained unmoved, and his name 
more and more became a word of love and of admiration in 
the households of the world. Burke spoke of him in his own 
burning and majestic terms ; Foster pointed to him as one 
cased in an iron mail of resolution such as made him a wonder 
among the sons of men ; Chalmers responded to his nobleness 
with all the tameless enthusiasm of his royal heart. But in 
our day a mighty hand has been stretched forth to drag him 
from his seat among the immortal ones of time : one, of per- 
haps more wondrous genius, and in some sense of more pene- 
trating intellectual glance, than either Chalmers, Burke, or Fos- 
ter, has flung quiet but remorseless scorn on Howard. We 
mean, of course, Mr. Carlyle. We deem it unnecessary to 
quote his words : those which appear to us to approach nearest 
to positive misconception and injustice we have already set 
before the reader. They are well known, occurring in his cel- 
ebrated pamphlet on Model Prisons. We think it can be 
stated in a word or two what Mr. Carlyle has seen, and what, 
making our appeal to readers, we must say he has not seen in 
Howard. He has seen regarding him that of which he ap- 
pears, in all cases, to possess a more vivid perception than any 
writer of past or present times — the intellectual type and cali- 
ber. We have had, and still have, our doubts whether a 
strong case might not be made out in defense even here, if the 
difference between working and talking talent were accurately 
defined, and the dullness of biographers taken fully into account. 
But we care not to urge this consideration on behalf of How- 
ard. We claim for him no intellectual glory. We concede 
that, if Mr. Carlyle does not impute to him any vulgar motive, 
of desire to make an appearance, or the like — and we leave 
readers to judge whether such an impression is, or is not, con- 
veyed by the words we have cited — there is nothing which he 



154 HOWARD ; 

says concerning him demonstrably false : say that his highest 
talents were "English veracity, solidity, simplicity," believe 
him even to have been (if you can, for we positively can not) 
" dull, and even dreary," still, we ask, is his highest praise the 
words, so severely qualified by the spirit of the context, " the 
modest, noble Howard?" Let any one look along that life, 
calmly figuring it to himself, pondering it till he knows its real 
meaning and vital principle, and say, whether there burns not 
through it, however vailed fi'om the general eye, a sublime, an 
immortal radiance. Let him say, whether we can not utter, 
with peculiar emphasis and veneration these words, " The holy 
Howard." It is on this we found his claim to be honored by 
men ; that he was honored by God to live nearer to Himself 
than any but a chosen few of the human race. 

And is this not a reasonable and equitable claim ] Is it for- 
ever to be impossible for a man to be honored of men unless 
his intellectual power is great ? Ah ! that were surely hard ; 
surely essential equality were thus denied me as a man ; surely 
I could not so be calmly content under this sun. If our rela- 
tion to the Infinite is of that nature which Ciirist has unfolded, 
it can not be so. If, from the seraphim who receive the light 
of the throne on their white robes, to the poor widow who 
kneels by her husband's corpse, and bows her head to the God 
who has given and taken away, we are but servants of one 
Master, soldiers of one host, members of one family, it can not 
be so. For then the highest honor of the archangel and of 
the child is, that he does, well and gladly, and giving God the 
glory, what God bids him do. And methinks it is best even 
so. We will honor the old soldier, whose name we have nev- 
er heard, but who at eventide contentedly wound the colors 
round his heart, and died for the good cause, as much as we 
honor the Cromwell who led that cause to the pinnacles of the 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 155 

world : ay, and without refusing to obey Cromwell either, 
without losing one atom of the real ^Yorth and value of so- 
called " hero-worship." The angel who ministers to a dying 
beggar may hold himself as highly honored as he who keeps 
the gate of heaven. 

Hence the honor we claim for Howard. Weak he may 
have been, slightly gifted if you will : he knew the sound of 
his Father's voice ; he could give his poor life for his sake. He 
showed to all men how the weakest do their work in God's 
army ; really he did exhibit, with a strange revealing power, 
how, were men unfallen, every order of intellectual faculty might 
be employed to its full extent, but with equal merit, that is 
with none, and with equal reward, that is, the free smiling of 
God's countenance. Despise him who will on earth, in heaven 
Isaac Newton does not look with scorn on John Howard ! Is 
not the special honoring of intellectual greatness, nay, the 
special honoring of any human being, an effect of the fall 1 Is 
it not the true attitude of all the finite to look aroimd with, love 
on their brethren, but with undivided gaze to look upward to 
God 1 It would seem assuredly to be so, and that we now 
honor our great ones merely because we must fix our poor 
eyes so steadfastly on them, while, commissioned by God, they 
lead us onward toward the eternal light. 

Howard is almost alone among those whom men have 
agreed to honor. It is the intellectually mighty, who, by that 
necessity of om- position just glanced, become best known. 
Thousands there may be, and there always are, whose whole 
lives are "faithful prayers," who would, with grateful joy, suffer 
any thing for the sake of Christ. But Howard was separated 
by God for a work which could not but attract attention ; an 
arduous and a heroic work, for which the time had fully come 
in the history of the world. For that work he was qualified, 



156 H o w AKD ; 

and it, with absolute thoroughness, he did. Money was as 
nothing in his estimation in comparison of it ; but he was as far 
above fame as money, and no danger or toil could daunt him : 
"cholera doctors," Mr Carlyle compares to him, but he went 
where hired doctors would not go, and what cholera doctor, 
what man among men, ever went for two months into solitary 
conlinement, amid infection and all discomfort, if perchance he 
might bring thence one drop of balm for the sorrowful '? Then 
consider his humility : ah ! surely Howard was one of the men 
who might have been left on his pedestal. Think how he him- 
self would have met Mr. Carlyle's scorn. " It is true," he 
w^ould have said ; " such I was, if so good ; I was nothing. Go 
into your great cathedral, and from the midst of your venerat- 
ed dead cast forth the statue of John Howard ; let a white 
tablet alone recall my memory, and place it beside that of my 
Harriet. " Howard never asked his fame ; in his life he 
would accept no votive wreath : whatever had been said of his 
followers, regarding him one might have expected silence. In 
a very extended sense, his fame was unsolicited. Not only was 
himself of slow speech, but his biographers were such as we 
have said. Yet the inarticulate human instinct discerned that 
there was around him that beauty of holiness, which, in the 
eyes of God and of angels, is alone honorable, and which it is 
well for men to honor, and placed him in the pantheon of the 
world : that human instinct, we think, was right ; there surely 
he will remain. Look not for him among the high intellectual 
thrones, among earth's sages or poets, among earth's kings or 
conquerors. But yonder, among the few lowly yet immortal 
ones, whose fame has been endorsed in heaven, see John How- 
ard. His image is formed of marble, pure as the everlasting 
snow; away from it, as if desecrating its whiteness, fall all the 
robes of false adornment in which men have sought to envelop 



AND THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY. 157 

it, away also fall all dimming, defacing, distorting vails of 
stupid misconception ; and there beams out clearly the face of 
a simple, humble man, earnest of purpose, celestially calm, and 
with one tear of inexpressible love on the cheek ; from the 
heavens comes a viewless hand, encircling the head with a 
serene and saintly halo, its mild radiance falling over the 
face, and blending with its speechless human pity ; the eye is 
fixed on the eternal mansions, and the lips seem ever, in hum- 
ble and tremulous gratitude, to say, " Lord God, why me 1" 
The outline and features of that face Mr. Carlyle saw, but that 
halo, and the fixedness of that heavenward gaze, he seems to 
us not to have seen. 



CHAPTER III. 

WILBERFORCE ; AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 

William Wilberforce was born in Hull, in August, 1759. 
The auspices of his birth were in important respects favorable ; 
a first glance reveals no exception or abatement to their happi- 
ness. Of a wealthy and ancient family, he opened his eyes on 
a life-path paved by affluence, and thick-strewn with the flowers 
of indulgence. Every influence around him was of comfort 
and kindness ; wherever his young eye fell, it met a smile. 
And his own nature was such as to make him peculiarly sus- 
ceptive of the delights around. He was, it is true, a tender 
and delicate child, small for his age, and in no respect of prom- 
ising appearance ; but there was in his heart an irrepressible 
fountain of kind and guileless vivacity, his voice was of sweet 
silvery tone, he was gentle and considerate in his ways ; alto- 
gether, he was a brisk, mild-spirited, fascinating little thing, 
who could center in himself every ray of kindness and com- 
fort, and enhance their personal enjoyment by radiating them 
out on all around him. All this was well ; perhaps a happier 
sphere could scarce be imagined : yet we can not pronounce it 
in the highest sense auspicious, because there was wanting in 
it any high presiding influence of character. The boy's eye 
could rest on no clear, earnest light of godliness, burning in 
his father's house ; his parents were conventionally excellent 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 159 

people, respectable, cheerful, hospitable, gaj, nothing better or 
worse. 

In 1768, the father of Wilberforce died; the latter inherited 
a rich patrimony, which was afterward increased. The child, 
now nine years old, was sent to reside with an uncle, living by 
turns at Wimbledon and St. James's Place. Here he came 
within the sphere of earnest piety. His aunt was one of those 
unnoticed witnesses to the inextinguishable power of vital 
Christianity, whose light, kindled by the instrumentality of 
Whitefield, spread a gentle but precious radiance through the 
spiritual haze of the last century. Under her influence, his mind 
was roused to a new earnestness, and turned with great force 
in a religious direction. At the age of twelve he wrote such 
letters on religious subjects as were afterward deemed by some 
worthy of publication ; and, though this was wisely prevented, 
we can not err in considering the fact a proof that his boyish 
intellect was brought into earnest and protracted consideration 
of religious truth. 

This state of matters was abruptly changed. His mother 
took the alarm. The prospect that her son should become a 
canting Methodist, was appalling. She immediately recalled 
him to Yorkshire, and commenced the process of erasing every 
mark of strong individual character, of softening down into 
mere insipidity and common-place every trait of personal god- 
liness, which had appeared. He was at once inaugurated in a 
course of systematic triviality, not to end until it was fiitally 
too late, whose great object was to clothe him in the garb of 
harmless, respectable frivolity, and leave him at last converted 
into that aimless worshiper of the hour, that lukewarm trimmer 
between all — in religion, literature, philosophy, and feeling — 
which is, either cold or hot, that weathercock of vacant mode, 
that all-embracing type of the conventional — a man of the world. 



160 wilberforce; 

His name threw open to him, on his return from London, 
every circle of fashion in Hull. Though still so young, he 
was introduced into all sorts of gay society. At first his 
lately-gained principles offered a firm opposition. The loud, 
half-animal life of the hearty, hospitable magnates of Hull 
contrasted boldly and unfavorably with the religious earnest- 
ness of his aunt's spiritual life. The fashion was to have din- 
ner-parties at two and sumptuous suppers at six, the enjoyment 
having evidently a close and important connection with the 
eating and drinking. Of card-parties, dancing, and theater- 
going, there was no end. In all this, he found at first no 
pleasure ; he turned in aversion from the coarse stimulants of 
sense, and sighed for the pure and lofty religion he had left. 
But he was still a mere boy. The kindness universally show- 
ered on him could not be received with indifference by his 
warm and impressible nature ; his was the age when new hab- 
its can yet be formed, and the process still result in charm ; 
worst of all, he perceived that his sprightliness and musical 
powers enabled him already to diffuse joy around him. The 
man who can fascinate society is he who of all others is most 
subject to its fascination: we can not wonder that the boy 
Wilberforce soon participated with joyous sympathy in all the 
merry-making of Hull. 

We enter no protest against the healthful gayety of youth. 
Even in that we here contemplate, there might, in many cases, 
have been nothing of present culpability or future injurious 
tendency. The young exuberant strength of boyhood health- 
fully and rightly prefers the open field to the close school- 
room, the athletic sport or joyous dance to the demure and 
measured walk. A strong mental endowment will, it is true, 
in most if not in all cases, evince itself by an element of 
thoughtfulness in early youth ; but it is ever a circumstance 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 161 

of evil omen, boding intellectual disease, when the thoughtful- 
ness of boyhood is of power sufficient to overbear its animal 
vivacity and sportive strength. One thing, however, is ever 
to be borne in mind, touching amusement and its connection 
with education ; it can not be the whole, but a part ; it must 
derive its zest from being the unstringing of the bow. In the 
case of Wilberforce, it can not be doubted that it usurped' a 
place by no means its due — a place where its influence was one 
of almost unmixed evil. And his natural temper and disposi- 
tion were precisely such as rendered this circumstance danger- 
ous. His mind was of a sensitive, impulsive, lively cast, 
taking quickly the hue of its environment, and perhaps origi- 
nally deficient in self-determining strength. To discipline his 
restless energy, to concentrate his volatile faculties, a firm 
though kind, a calm and methodic though genial training was 
required. Instead of this, he was, from early boyhood, the 
pet of gay circles, where no serious word was spoken, and 
found himself reaping most abundantly the approbation of his 
mother, w^hen he flung all earnest thought aside, gave the odds 
and ends of his time to study, and made it the business of his 
life to be a dashing, lively, engaging member of fashionable 
society. That wiiich occupied the formal place of instruction, 
was the tuition of a clerical gentleman who kept an academy. 
While residing with him, the main part of Wilberforce's edu- 
cation was what intellectual aliment he could gather at the ta- 
bles of fox-hunting squires and jovial county gentlemen ; and 
we can conceive the effect upon the now faint religious im- 
pressions of the boy, of the spectacle of a man, set apart to 
preach the Gospel, whose whole life was a gentlemanly sneer at 
the spirituality of his office. Ere he proceeded to enter the 
university, w^hich he did when seventeen years of age, every 
lingering trace of his early earnestness had been eflliced ; he 



162 wilberforce; 

was in that soft plastic state wliich is incapable of exerting any 
reaction whatever upon surrounding influences. In all that re- 
lated to the external qualities of a young man of fashion, his 
training had been amply successful. His manners were the 
happy union of sprightliness, ease, and unaffected kindness ; 
his faculties were acute, his sympathy warm and vivacious, his 
wit ready and genial ; he sung with great grace and sweetness. 
Furnished as he was upon entering the university, it is scarce 
to be wondered at that his sojourn there was well-nigh vacant 
of good : it were perhaps more correct to say, that it was fer- 
tile in evil. Not that it was contaminated by any taint of 
downright vice : the nature of Wilberforce was always too 
healthful, too open, free, and sunny, for that ; but that the 
volatility which naturally characterized him, and whose final 
triumph, promoted by the studied frivolity of his boyhood, 
might yet have been averted, was here pampered to fresh lux- 
uriance, and left to spread itself fairly over his mind ; that the 
acquisition of the power of sustained and earnest study was 
fatally neglected ; and that the opportunity of that first intro- 
duction to the treasuries of the knowledge of the world, which 
60 generally determines the extent to which these treasuries 
are afterward availed of, was lost. At St. John's College, 
Cambridge, he fell among a set of the most pleasant, good- 
humored, hearty fellows in the world He had lots of money, 
of temper, of briskness, of wit ; they had free, jovial ways — 
did n't mind telling a good fellow what were his good points — 
could study themselves, but could not perceive why a man of 
fortune should fag — could probably tell a good story, give and 
take a repartee, appreciate a good song, or sing one — last of 
all, and without any question, had the best appetite for good 
wine and Yorkshire pie. And so Wilberforce, whose natural 
quickness enabled him to figure to sufficient advantage at ex- 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 163 

animations, left study to the poor and the dull ; enough for 
him to be the center of a joyous and boisterous throng, every 
good thing he said telling capitally, every face around the 
board raying forth on him smiles and thankful complacency, 
the hours dancing cheerfully by, and casting no look behind to 
remind him that they were gone forever. 

"The sick in body call for aid ; the sick 
In mind are covetous of more disease." 

Those men of St. John's College, Cambridge, had all the best 
feelings toward Wilberforce, and seemed to him his truest 
friends. If you had spoken of him to any of them, you would 
have heard nothing but affectionate praise, with possibly just 
the slightest caustic mixture of contemptuous pity ; if, in their 
presence, you had called him a fool, or struck him on the face, 
a score of tongues or arms had moved to defend him. Yet 
how well had it been for Wilberforce, had some rough but 
kind-hearted class-fellow turned upon him, like that class-fellow 
who saved Paley to British literature, and told him roundly 
he was a trifling fool ; how well for him had his dancing-boots 
been exchanged for Johnson's gaping shoes, his Yorkshire pie 
for Heyne's boiled pease-cods ! With bitter emphasis would 
he have agreed to this in latter days, when he looked back on 
this time with keen anguish, and said, that those who should 
have seen to his instruction, acted toward him unlike Christian, 
or even honest men. But such reflections were now far. 
Fanned by soft adulation, his heart told him he was a clever 
fellow, who would carry all before him ; for the present, he 
would sing his song, and shuffle the cards, and enjoy all the 
pleasure he imparted. So it continued until he approached the 
season of his majority, and it became proper to choose a voca- 
tion for life. 



164 wilberforce; 

Dismclined to mercantile pursuits, he withdrew from the 
business of vrhich he was at his majority to have become a 
partner, and turned to another profession ; one which may be 
deemed of some importance, that of member of the British 
House of Commons. To be one of the governing counsel of 
the British Empire, to adjudicate on the affairs of that consid- 
erable assemblage of millions, to lend a helping voice and 
hand to steer the British monarchy in such an era as ours, that 
it may ever have its head forward, avoiding collisions, and 
sunken rocks, and quicksands, may be thought a task of some 
difficulty and solemnity. The instinct of British honor revolts 
at the idea of its being made a trade ; no salaried members, 
were your legislators forever confined to a class in conse- 
quence ; but there is no such prevailing abhorrence against its 
being made an amusement. Accordingly, it is one of what 
may be styled the hereditary recreations of the British opulent 
and aristocratic classes ; perhaps of a somewhat higher and 
more imposing order than fox-hunting and grouse-shooting ; 
having, in particular, the advantage of serving as a background 
to these, giving them a look of relaxation in the eyes of the 
world, imparting to their enjoyment a fine zest, and freeing 
them of all ennui or monotony. Young Wilberforce, whom 
w^e have been observing, and of whose education for this pro- 
fession we can judge, thought that to be an honorable member 
would just suit him. He had, indeed, received a good average 
training for the business. Quick to acquire, he had secured a 
fair amount of classical knowledge, and in those vital particu- 
lars, suavity of manners, happy fluency of speech, generally 
engaging deportment, he was surpassed by none ; the old 
gayeties of Hull, the Olympian suppers of St. John's, and an 
excellent musical talent, would probably set him high among 
young honorable m.embers. Besides, he would spend the last 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 165 

year of his minority in London ; in feasting and addressing a 
number of Hull freemen who lived there, he might make ad- 
vances in the stiff old art of ruling men ; while his evenings 
would be spent in actual apprenticeship to his business by at- 
tending the gallery of the House. All this was doae ; the 
member of the British Parliament deemed himself fully equip- 
ped. Immediately on becoming of age, Wilberforce was elected 
by an overwhelming majority for the city of Hull. His seat 
cost him between £8000 and £9000. 

Returned by such a constituency, and in such a manner, and 
on terms of personal intimacy with Pitt, who had been a Cam- 
bridge acquaintance, and whom he had met in the gallery of 
the House, Wilberforce found honorable membership a most 
easy and animated affair. Acting as background, in the way 
we have indicated, it threw out finally the foreground of fun 
and frolic, of sport and light joyance, of feast, and dance, and 
merriment, on which he acted. At all the clubs he was received 
with the most cheerful welcome ; there, with the men in whose 
hands were, or were soon to be, the destinies of the British na- 
tion, he laughed, and chatted, and sung, and gambled. His 
winnings were once or twice a hundred pounds, and happening, 
on one occasion, from an unforeseen circumstance, to keep the 
bank, he cleared six hundred. But here, as always, on the 
verge of sheer vice, his better nature checked him ; what would 
have stamped a man of radical baseness an irretrievable gam- 
bler, pained and shocked Wilberforce : he played no more. 
There was no abatement of any of the other pleasures. " Fox, 
Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all your leading men," frequented 
these clubs ; Pitt showed himself there as the wittiest of the 
witty ; altogether, the spectacle presented by British statesmen 
behind the scenes was one of mirth and great exhilaration. 
Gay, boisterous, frivolous they w^ere ; not devoid of a certain 



166 WILBERFORCE ; 

earnestuess and business-like expertness when at their work, 
yet sportive and light of heart, as men whose places were safe, 
and who, for the rest, had only the matters of a British empire 
to think of. Wilberforce was by no means a technically in- 
active member ; he presented to the eye of the world an un- 
impeachable aspect, and kept his own conscience perfectly 
quiet. Seeming, to himself and others, to be doing his whole 
duty, he was satisfied and happy. Glancing, with his quick, 
clear eye, into circle after circle — ^lighting up all faces, by the 
gentle might of his wit, if not with uncontrollable mirth, yet 
with soft, comfortable smiles — suiting himself, by a tact swift 
and sudden as magic, to the society or subject of the moment 
— ^gesticulating and mimicking with rare histrionic art — pouring 
forth, in unbroken stream, a warm and glowing eloquence — or 
gliding softly into one of those songs to which his rich melli- 
fluous voice lent such witching charms — he was the life and 
soul of supper-parties, the caressed of fashionable circles, the 
darling of the clubs. The Prince of Wales praised his singing ; 
could human ambition look higher than that ? 

After some parliamentary work of this nature, Wilberforce 
flits gayly across the Channel ; we find him in the autumn of 
1783, with his friends Pitt and Elliot, in the French capital. 
It is strangely interesting to mark him as he flutters among the 
Vauxhall luminaries of the old French court : light and friv- 
olous almost as they, yet with an open eye, and an English 
shrewdness, which note well the salient points in the dream- 
like scene. His jottings are brief but suggestive: — Supped 
at Count Don son's. Round-table : all English but Don son. 
Noailles, Dupont. Queen came after supper. Cards, tric-trac, 
and backgammon, which Artois, Lauzun, and Chartres, played 
extremely well." This was that Artois who goes down to a 
fool's immortality as the inventor or possessor of those 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 1G7 

" breeches of a kind new in this world," into which, and from 
which, his four tall lackeys lifted him every morning and eve- 
ning ; and this Chartres, who distinguished himself at tric-trac, 
became Egalite, and found it more difficult to play another 
game. Had the curtain of the future been drawn aside for a 
moment before the eyes of the group, and Philip of Orleans 
seen himself at that moment when he stopped before his own 
palace on his way to the guillotine, what astonishment, and 
trembling, and dismay, would have sunk over that gay com- 
pany ! He sees La Fayette, too, and styles him " a pleasing, 
enthusiastical man," surely with happy shrewdness and accu- 
racy. The latter is already a patriot of the most high-flown 
description, quite on the model of Addison's Cato. The ladies 
of the court try to induce him to join in cards ; but will the 
classic hero compromise the austere dignity of freedom ? The 
ladies have to glide away in admiring respect, almost in rever- 
ence, and the heart of the patriot is strengthened. " The king 
is so strange a being (of the hog kind), that it is worth going a 
hundred miles for the sight of him, especially a boar-hunting." 
This was poor Louis, whose contribution to human knowledge 
was of so decidedly negative a nature ; who bore testimony to 
this one doctrine, whose worth, however, deserved to be writ- 
ten in blood ; that nature, in this world, grants inappreciably 
little to good intentions. He sees Marie Antoinette frequently, 
and bears witness to the gentle witchery of her manner, queenly 
dignity blended with feminine kindness. Seen against the 
darkness which we know lay in the background, all this gayly- 
tinted picture, of which Wilberforce for a short pace formed 
an appropriate figure, has a strange and fascinating look. 
"■ Light mortals, how ye walk your light life-minuet, over bot- 
tomless abysses, divided from you by a film !" 

In the spring of 1784, Wilberforce was elected to represent 



168 WILBERFORCE ; 

Yorkshire. His popularity in his native county was exl ?eme ; 
and when, after the prorogation of Parliament, he went down 
to spend his birth-day there, and appeared at the races, the 
whole era of his history which we now contemplate may be 
said to have reached its highest manifestation and climax. A 
running chorus of applauding shouts followed his path; he 
was the cynosure of all eyes ; if vacant stare and noise could 
make one happy, he were the man. 

In October, 1784, he left England on a journey to the Con- 
tinent, in the company of Isaac Milner, brother of the Church 
historian, and, though unapt to show them, of thoroughly evan- 
gelical views. A few serious words which dropped from Mil- 
ner's lips on the journey, and the effect of a perusal of Dod- 
dridge's " Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," did not 
altogether pass away from the mind of AVilberforce ; invisibly, 
perhaps intermittently, yet indestructibly, the disturbing influ- 
ence acted within. On his return to London, he again rushed 
into the halls of fashion and frivolity ; now and then a moni- 
tion of other things flickered momentarily, like the glance of 
an angel's eye, across his sphere of vision ; but he still con- 
tinued, with reckless determination, to drain the chalice of wild, 
unmeasured niirth. No change was seen in the external aspect 
of his life : he frisked about at Almack's, danced till five in 
the morning, charmed and fascinated as before ; yet the moni- 
tory glance was at intervals upon him, the perfect peace of 
death was broken. 

In the summer of 1785, he had another Continental tour 
with Milner. They now conversed more earnestly on the 
subject of religion, and commenced together the study of the 
New Testament. The time at length had come from which 
Wilberforce was to date a new era in his life : the time when 
he was, whether in delusion or not, to believe himself savingly 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 169 

influenced by the Spirit of the Almighty, and to prepare to 
walk onward to eternity under that guidance. 

The manner of the change now wrought in Wilberforce is 
of less importance to us than its effects ; but we must briefly 
indicate its general aspect. In our minds the belief is deeply 
seated, that the religious influence by which we saw him im- 
pressed in boyhood never totally lost its effect. Like an in- 
effaceable writing, it lay in his heart during all those years 
when the desert sands of vanity swept over it, hidden, perhaps 
forgotten, but imperishably there : it required but a calm hour 
and a strong skillful hand, putting aside the sand and revealing 
the golden characters, to bring the soul of Wilberforce to ac- 
knowledge their sacred authority. On this point, however, we 
do not insist ; it is beyond the reach of positive proof He 
did, at all events, now pause in, startled earnestness ; the fleet- 
ing monitions could no longer be put aside. The truths of 
God's word first forced an intellectual assent ; conscience, after 
long slumber, then awoke in the might of its divine commis- 
sion, and, like a heavenly messenger with a sword of unearthly 
fire in the hand, defied him to advance another step. His 
trouble of soul was long and terrible. He asserted in after 
years that he had never read of mental agonies more acute 
than his own ; and we think it were difficult to over-estimate 
the weight of this testimony. Yet it was not terror that chiefly 
dismayed him. "It was not so much," these are his own 
words, " the fear of punishment by which I was affected, as a 
sense of my great sinfulness in having so long neglected the 
unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour." His soul was 
not altogether a stranger to fear. The finite being who begins 
to have a fixed assurance that there is not a relation of perfect 
concord between him and the Infinite One, may well experience 
a feeling of awe ; the man who hears conscience, with iron 

8 



170 . WILBERFORCE ; 

tongue, proclaiming that sin and misery are as substance and 
shadow, who has any conception of the deep, drear, moaning 
affirmative of this, which goes, like a melancholy Arctic wind, 
over all the centuries of the life of mankind, and who deems 
it even possible that this Upas root lies too deep in his own 
bosom to be eradicated by mortal hands, may well be afraid. 
The instinct of the human race echoes the Scripture words, 
" The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." But it 
was no slavish dread which urged him on. His was no longer 
the reckless bearing of a man of the world, arising from va- 
cancy of thought or sheer imbecility ; nor did he change his 
attitude for that of the haughty assertor of himself against the 
infinitude of power, whose position is surely that of a maniac 
or demon : but it was the light of celestial holiness burning 
eternally around the throne of God in the far deeps of heaven, 
that caught and fixed his eye, it was an awakening conscious- 
ness of deep moral wants, that filled his heart with yearning 
sorrow, it was a conviction that the name of Christian had 
been hitherto, in his case, a mere vague sound or hypocritic 
deception, that touched him with hallowed shame, and it was 
dumb amazement at the fact that the most sublime instance 
of love ever given to this universe had been unknown and un- 
heeded by him, which brought him at last, a weeping suppli- 
ant, to the Mount of Calvary. 

The work he had to accomplish was of stern difficulty. 
That long course of noisy vanity had as it were deafened and 
distracted his spiritual nature ; fixed thought he found in itself 
difficult ; and now he had to stop and think as with his soul in 
his hand. Had escape been possible, he would have escaped ; 
for he put himself at first in a firmly defensive attitude, and 
turned again for a time to the charmers whose spell had hith- 
erto held him. Consider what an outlook was his. By a thou • 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 171 

sand viewless chains he was bonud to the world. Known and 
adulated in all the cluhs and London fashionable circles, re- 
joicing in a rising fame for eloquence, and having long enjoyed 
the still more delicious fame of wit, keenly sensitive to every 
shaft of ridicule and intensely relishing applause, the strings 
of his very heart would be rent if he tore himself away ; while 
hardest of all, he saw clearly that friendships, to his tender 
nature very dear, must either be cast away altogether, or ar- 
range themselves on new sympathies of a comparatively shal- 
low order. But it was to be done ; further he could not go ; 
that flaming sword of God's angel, conscience, barred his 
way. 

In deep trouble of mind, he returned to London. He had 
abandoned the defensive attitude ; he no longer stood as one 
who could put a good face on • the matter, and, as it were, 
prove to God that all was right ; he had flung away the ar- 
mor in which he trusted, he had exchanged complacency for 
bitter repentance, defense or apology for earnest prayers. It 
was not yet light within, but outward duty became plain, and 
with it he proceeded at once. He ^v^ote to his principal 
friends, informing them that he was not what he had been ; he 
withdrew his steps from every haunt of worldly mirth ; des- 
pite a rising feeling of shame, he commenced the worship of 
God as a householder. He brought himself also, after a severe 
struggle, to introduce himself to John Newton, and thus com- 
meficed the formation of a new circle of friendship. 

At length he began to reap his reward ; that peace which 
has arisen after toil and darkness in so many Christian souls, 
and which is essentially the same in all ; that peace which 
came with returning light over the prostrate and trembling 
soul of Paul, which brought healing to the agonized heart of 
Luther, which was devoutly treasured alike by Cromwell, Ed- 



1*72 WILE ERF ORCE ; 

Trards, and so far different men as Brainerd and ISI'Clieyne, 
diffused itself, at last, through the breast of Wilberforce. His 
testimony was soon decisive, that he had reached a higher and 
more exquisite joy than he had ever known in the saloons of 
fashion ; " never so happy in my life, as this whole evening," 
are words from his diary of the period. His correspondence 
began to breathe the earnestness of Christian zeal, and the 
serenity of Christian enjoyment. " The Eastern nations," he 
writes to his sister, " had their talismans, which were to ad- 
vertise them of every danger, and guard them from every 
mischief. Be the love of Christ our talisman." Again, writ- 
ing on an Easter Sabbath, " Can my dear sister," he exclaims, 
" wonder that I call on her to participate in the pleasure I am 
tasting. I know how you sympathise in the happiness of 
those you love, and I could not, therefore, forgive myself if I 
were to keep my raptures to myself, and not invite you to 
partake of my enjoyment. The day has been delightful. I 
was out before six, and made the fields my oratory, the sun 
shining as bright and as warm as at midsummer. I think my 
o\vn devotions become more fervent when offered in this vray, 
amid the general chorus with which all nature seems on such 
a morning to be swelling the song of praise and thanksgiving." 
He had now deliberately devoted himself to Christ, and re- 
solved that all his energies should be dedicated to His service. 

We must pause for a moment, to learn accurately the pre- 
cise position of Wilberforce at this juncture, to know what 
Clmstian conversion had done for him, and to estimate the 
forces at his command for serving his God and his country. 

The look he cast over his past life was one of astonishment 
and sorrow ; his feelings were as those of a man who, after a 
night of intoxication and revelry, is aroused from a drunken 
morning sleep to brace on his armor and go instantly to meet 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUIL A N THIl P Y . l73 

the foe ; or of one who finds that, while he has slept, a fair 
. wind has been lost, and the tide is gone far backward, and he 
will never by utmost diligence make now a good voyage. He 
was twenty-six years of age. His life, since his twelfth year, 
had been one course of mental dissipation ; his intellect, natu- 
rally alert, had been abandoned to utter volatility ; he stood 
appalled, and well-nigh powerless. Had his will been roused 
to a giant energy — had he collected all his faculties for one 
determined struggle — had he, calculating that, to attain the 
mental power and material which a true education might have 
at that epoch realized for him, a space of ten or at least five 
years of stern, unmitigated, silent toil was absolutely required, 
deliberately given that period to the task, and performed it, 
it is impossible to say what he might have been, or what work 
he might Imve eflfected. But he made no such grand efibrt : 
life was so far advanced that he did not dare to withdraw his 
hand for a moment from work; he does not seem to have 
even formed the conception of what, as to us is sufficiently 
plain, was absolutely necessary. 

We do not blame Wilberforce in this matter ; but it is re- 
quisite for us to be thus explicit, that it may be distinctly un- 
derstood what it is we conceive him to have been, and what 
Ave believe he was not. He can in no sense be regarded as the 
Christian statesman of our era. The modern Christian states- 
man, indeed, has not yet appeared. For, by statesman, we 
can not be supposed to mean simply member of Parliament : 
we must mean one who exerts so much power in the political 
world, that the general aspect of afiliirs is colored by his influ- 
ence, the attitude of his country among the kingdoms of the 
world that which he, at least in a large measure, has appointed. 
The Christian statesman will be he who can impart to Britain 
once more the aspect of a great, free, Protestant nation ; who, 



1*74 wiLBEii force; 

in the nineteenth century, will bring Christianity into politics, 
and, helming the state with the strong arm of a Cromwell, 
make it apparent to all nations that he holds his commission, 
as governor, from God ; who will gather around him that deep 
and ancient sympathy with vital Christianity which does exist 
in these lands, who will combine it with the science and adapt 
it to the conditions of the time, and make the flag of England 
once more not the mere symbol of commercial wealth or 
military renown, but the standard of Christian civilization, 
and a beacon to every people that will be free. The ulti- 
mate perfection of civilization is an enlightened and godly 
freedom. 

But our words, we fancy some reader conceiving, become 
visionary, express mere vague enthusiasm, or Utopian dreams. 
Is it really so '? Have we tacitly come to the conclusion and 
agreement that Christianity, that Protestantism, is to be per- 
mitted indeed to exert what power it can in subordinate 
spheres, but, in its distinctive character, is no more to be ad- 
mitted into the councils of nations ? Have we consented that 
Britain, when dealing with other kingdoms, shall indeed speak, 
and with resistless power, as a commercial, a military, a colo- 
nizing nation, but have no word to say as a Christian nation ? It 
may be so ; but let us perceive clearly what we imply by the 
concession. We imply that nations, as such, are exempted 
from the ordinance of glorifying God ; that, in this important 
respect, they form an absolute solecism in the universe. For 
our own part, we can not believe it ; we can not but be pro- 
foundly assured that nations are intended, we say not in what 
precise way, but at least in their distinctive character, to bear 
a part in the universal harmony of the universal choir that 
hymns the Creator^s praise ; we can not but believe that some- 
thing more vital than political morality, more nobly human 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 1*75 

than desire of natioi.al wealth, more lofty even than what is 
far higher than these, martial honor, must one day again pene- 
trate the senates and privy councils of the world ; it is with 
sorrow and shame that we regard the fact, that, since the days 
of Cromwell, there has been no leader of the British nation, no 
Pitt, no Fox, no Wellington, of whom you can say that, as a 
statesman, he was Christian. Wilberforce was a Christian 
member of Parliament ; it may even be alleged that he did, to 
some perceptible extent, introduce Christianity into the councils 
of Great Britain ; but the Christian statesman of the modern 
epoch he certainly was not. 

The power of vital godliness did all for Wilberforce that 
was, perhaps, without a miracle, possible ; it did not create 
within him new powers, it did not convey supernaturally into 
his mind new and sufficient stores of knowledge ; but it did 
much, it did more, we may confidently say, than any other 
conceivable power could have done. What that was, we go 
on to show. 

Light, frivolous, fascinating, Wilberforce made a narrow 
escape from being a character of a sort which is surely one of 
the most pitiful human life can show — a fashionable wit and 
jester. How profoundly melancholy is the spectacle of a man, 
the main tenor of whose life is an empty giggle and crackle of 
fool's laughter ! How ghastly, after it is all past, does the 
perpetual smirking and smartness of such men as Theodore 
Hook and Sydney Smith really appear ! Wilberforce could 
vie with these in powers of entertaining and being entertained ; 
his whole training, with one slight exception, tended to foster 
these powers ; and now they had found their sphere, and passed 
their probation. In politics, his position promised little better. 
With powers of natural eloquence which drew unmeasured 
applause from such men as Burke and Pitt, with great quick- 



176 



WILBERFORCE 



ness of memory, and, to a certain extent, of arrangement, 
with a judgment naturally clear and strong, and with a heart 
which would not swerve from the path of a rough genuine 
English honor, he had certainly reached a conspicuous station 
as a supporter of Pitt, and could speak a distinct, independent, 
and valuable word on most subjects ; yet he himself records, 
that his political life was then without unity, that he " wanted 
first principles," that his own distinction was his " darling ob- 
ject." We can not but agree with him when he says, " The 
first years that I was in Parliament I did nothing — nothing, I 
mean, to any good purpose." 

Both as man and as politician, he was now changed. The 
flickering light of vacant and aimless mirth faded from his lip 
and eye, the sacred energy of Christian purpose began to mold 
and brighten his features ; if there was still somewhat of rest- 
lessness and unsteadied vehemence in his look, it had one point 
toward which it always turned, and its natural kindness was 
gradually deepened and sublimed into the holier warmth of 
Christian love. As a politician, he reached a new independ- 
ence and individuality. He could no longer wheel round in 
the circle of party ; he could no longer, even to a limited ex- 
tent, take his opinions in the mass from the faction to which he 
belonged ; he told Pitt he v/ould still support him where he 
could, but that he was no longer to be a party man, even to 
the same extent as heretofore. He looked out for a work of 
his own, for something which he might do as one whose char- 
acter was in all things professedly Christian, and who believed 
that it was as God's servant alone that he could take a share in 
the government of Britain. For this work, whatever it might 
be, he lost no time in preparing himself He instantly set 
about the task of concentrating his faculties, and enriching his 
intellectual stores ; he turned to study with an earnestness he 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. Ill 

had never hitherto known ; above all, he commenced the 
careful and unintermitted study of Holy Writ. This last we 
agree with his biographers in considering the most important 
element in his new mental discipline. The power of the Chris- 
tian Scriptures to engage, to train, and to occupy the intellect, 
has been attested in express and emphatic terms by such think- 
ers as Jonathan Edwards and Lessing. 

Wilberforce did not wait long ere he found his work. It 
was twofold. On Sunday, the 28th of October, 1787, he wrote 
these words in his journal : " God Almighty has set before me 
two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade, and the 
reformation of manners." With solemn yet courageous earnest- 
ness, he assayed these august achievements ; he had already 
counted the forces against him in his public and private Chris- 
tian walk ; but after looking them full in the face, this had 
been his conclusion : " But then we have God and Christ on 
our side ; we have heavenly armor ; the crown is everlasting 
life, and the struggle how short, compared with the eternity 
which follows it ! Yet a little while, and He that shall come 
will come, and will not tarry." 

It is with Wilberforce, in his connection with those two 
movements, the first of which resulted in the emancipation of the 
slaves in the British colonies, and the second of which devel- 
oped into what is called Exeter Hall Philanthropy, that we are 
mainly concerned. The part, indeed, which he individually 
bore in each is of comparatively slight importance ; it we can 
briefly indicate in the outset of our remarks on the respective 
subjects. But it were well, if such might be possible, to reach 
a conclusive estimate at once of the value of the great meas- 
ures of Abolition of the Slave Trade, and Slave Emancipation, 
and of the part Christianity bore in their attainment ; while 
the class of kindred phenomena, which we include in the gcn- 
8* 



1*78 WILBERF OKCE ; 

eral designation of philanthropic efforts for the reformation of 
manners, are those with which we are at present more particu- 
larly engaged. 

Of the particular method in which Wilberforce led the con- 
test against the Slave Trade, and of the various stages of that 
contest, we deem it unnecessary to speak. His task can not 
be alleged to have been of a severity demanding the highest 
efforts of courage and endurance, or whose performance called 
forth special heroism. That he did encounter obloquy and 
scorn, that he did undergo heavy and protracted labor, is cer- 
tain ; that, from year to year, he stood forth with the calm de- 
termination of one who had a great work to do, and who would 
do it with English courage, sagacity and perseverance, is unde- 
niable ; that, in the whole course of his operations, he earned 
that substantial applause which is the meed of every man who 
performs well and completely the duty which he regards him- 
self commissioned of God to accomplish, no one can question. 
But we claim for him no higher honor than this : our opinion 
here is substantially the same as that of Sir James Stephen. 
His sphere of exertion, whatever its inconveniences or occa- 
sional troubles, was, on the whole, one of honor and ease; 
failure brought no danger or biting disgrace, and, from the civ- 
ilized world, voices were raised to cheer and applaud him ; it 
was worthy and honorable to struggle and conquer as he did, 
but the fact of his having done so, can never be such a testi- 
mony to character, as similar exertions were in the case of 
men who worked in the gleam of half a world's indignation, 
and, for one stern enemy, had always to look into the eyes of 
death. 

It was in 1789 that he delivered his first regular speech on 
the Slave Trade. Even when we have made allowance for the 
enthusiasm of the moment, we must conclude that the opinions 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF P H I L A N TH U O P Y . 179 

expressed of this performance by Burke and Bishop Porteus, 
prove Wilberforce to have been a man of great natural elo- 
quence, and of rich and vigorous mind. " The House, the na- 
tion, and Europe," according to Burke, " were under great and 
serious obligations to the honorable gentleman for having 
brought forward the subject in a manner the most masterly, 
impressive, and eloquent. The principles were so well laid 
down, and supported with, so much force and order, that 
it equaled any thing he had heard in modern times, and was 
not perhaps to be surpassed in the remains of Grecian elo- 
quence." Porteus styles it " one of the ablest and most elo- 
quent speeches that was ever heard." It lasted three hours. 
Its effect was to bear the House, with astonishing unanimity, 
along with the speaker. On the whole, we must regard it a 
conclusive proof that Wilberforce possessed popular talents 
of a high order. In 1807, after many a galling disappointment, 
his efforts were finally crowned with success. Congratulations 
poured in upon him from all parts of the world ; but while 
drinking deeply of the joy which rewarded his toil, he aban- 
doned every claim to honor for himself; all pride was svral- 
lowed up in thankfulness. " Oh what thanks do I owe to the 
Giver of all good, for bringing me in His gracious Providence 
to this great cause, which at length, after almost nineteen years' 
labor, is successful !" These are the words of a true Christian 
soldier: their humility and silent earnestness, amid the ap- 
plause of millions, are surely beautiful. He lived to see a still 
greater day. When he retired from political strife, the stan- 
dard he had so long borne was held aloft by Buxton and oth- 
ers ; with deep emphasis did he again thank God, when, in 
1833, Britain emancipated her slaves. 

Concerning this whole work of slave emancipation, Ave have 
now heard the two extremes of opinion. For a time, and a 



180 wiLBEK force; 

long time, it seemed to be a subject on which men were at last 
agreed ; a universal pa^an arose around it. and continued to be 
chanted on all platforms, in all newspapers, in all schools of 
rhetoric and poetry. But, after a time, there exhibited itself 
a disposition to question the advisability and intrinsic excel- 
lence of the measures, and at length a strong revulsion of feel- 
ing had taken place in certain quarters. Mr. Carlyle has 
poured the chalice of his scorn, comparable to molten iron, on 
Britain's whole dealing with the Negroes of her colonies, and, 
wherever his influence is paramount, a disposition to denounce 
the proceedings of the advocates of abolition and emancipation 
manifests itself. 

The paeans were certainly, we think, struck on too high a 
key. The stern and numerous difficulties which have since re- 
vealed themselves cast no shadow before ; that one grand, all- 
comprehending difficulty of maldng men free, implying, as it 
does, such an elevation of nature, such a raising above sensu- 
ality, sloth, and foolishness, into industry, self-respect, and wis- 
dom, as only a Divine hand could at once effect, was not then 
conceived of; it did not strike men that, if they destroyed 
Sodom, they might have in its place only a Dead Sea. Yet, 
after all, we are disposed to say that the plaudits had more 
reason in them than the denunciations. There is something 
wholesome and inspiring in the sound of human rejoicing over 
wrong and iniquity even believed to be overthrown ; but, on 
the other side, the vituperation, when all is well looked into, 
turns out to have little more on v/hich to support itself, than 
the old flict, whose truth we must so often acknowledge and 
put up with, that human affairs are not ideal, that human in- 
tellects are indubitably bounded. We shall endeavor to strike 
the truth between the opposing views. 

Slave emancipation, then, of which we consider the abolition 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF P H IL A NTH liO T Y . 81 

of the Slave Trade a part, we regard as a great initial measure, 
which did not exhaust the case, which did not even proceed far 
with it, which can not be said to have touched certain of its 
greatest and most strictly original difficulties, but which cleared 
the ground for its possible discussion, fixed the imperative con- 
ditions of the problem, and laid down the fundamental axioms 
by which it must be solved. It cleared the atmosphere round 
the whole subject-; its very excess, if such there was, the very 
fact of its abstaining from any tempering or temporizing ex- 
pedients, but attempting to break, as by one sledge-hammer 
blow, the slave-chain that it abhorred, made its teaching of 
certain great first principles the more emphatic. These may, 
we think, be briefly recounted ; they seem to range themselves 
under two heads. 

■ The first great truth it declared v/as none other than that of 
which we have already spoken, and on which we shall not here 
again enlarge : That an essential equality subsists among all 5 
the members of the human family. It was the second great 
assertion by Christian Philanthropy of this fundamental princi- 
ple: Howard's work in the prisons of the world was the 
first. 

Slavery, in its essential nature, is precisely that which puts 
man individually in the stead of God, as the ultimate source of 
authority regarding a human being. Hence is at once obvious 
the error of those who, pointing to the subordination of class 
to class, and such other arrangements of society as restrain 
and circumvent every man in every sphere, exclaim that slave- 
ry can not be abolished. From the laws of society, in some 
form or other, wq cannot escape; but, wi'iatever their imper- 
fections, we must look at society as originally an ordinance ofy 
God, enforced by a necessity of nature, and, with whatever 
subordinate disadvantages and difKculties, conducing toward 



182 wilberforce; 

the very highest and noblest results for the individual and the 
race ; no man, therefore, is a slave, however hard he toils, how- 
ever ill he fares, in simply conforming to them. But what- 
ever negatives the action of the powers with which God has 
gifted a man, and which he holds from Him, is of the nature 
of slavery ; and thus, indeed, every social imperfection involv- 
ing injustice and partiality, is more or less allied to it ; when 
a man is bought and sold as a chattel or animal, the action of 
those powers may be said to be negatived altogether. Thus, 
too we see that a man who is vitally a Christian can not be 
totally a slave ; he is Christ's freed-man ; there is a region in 
his heart which he deliberately regards as exempt from the 
control of his earthly master, a point in which, should he com- 
mand him, he will not obey, but, if it must be, die — a free- 
man. 

The second lesson which these legislative measures read to 
the world was this : That Mammon was not the ultimate au- 
thority in this question ; that, though the pecuniary loss were 
of indefinite amount, there were other considerations, of jus- 
tice and humanity, which would overtop them, and that in- 
finitely. It was as if Mammon and Justice had been pitted 
against each other, with the world for an arena : Mammon 
pointed to these souls of men, said they represented gold, and 
declared that the smoke of their torment would blacken the 
dome of Heaven ere he let them from beneath his sway ; Jus- 
tice flung to him twenty millions, and bade him, with a con- 
temptuous smile, relax his hold. By whatever law the ques- 
tions connected with the Negro race were to be ultimately 
settled, it was not to be a consideration in the case, how they 
would realize the greatest pecuniary profit for white men ; the 
general principle was emphatically enounced, that, whatever of 
wealth or luxury a man may extract from any portion of the 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PH I L A N TH K O F Y. 183 

earth, by making his fellow-inan the tool for its attainment, 
this method is one essentially unjust, and on no conceivable 
hypothesis to be defended. 

On the Avhole, then, we m.ust pronounce the value of these 
measures great, although the present state of our West Indian 
Colonies is as it is. Of the melancholy aspect they present, 
we entertain so profound an idea, that we can hardly trust 
ourselves to express it. Perhaps, fairly and fully considered, 
our legislation on subjects touching these colonies since the 
measure of 1833, is the most fatuous, contradictory, mean, and 
feeble, that ever had existence. If it had been the wish of 
Britain to stultify or abjure her own former acts, and if she had 
desired, by deliberate national hypocrisy, to change the form, 
but, perhaps, increase the virulence of her cruelty to the Ne- 
gro race, she could not, by conceivable possibility, have suc- 
ceeded better than she has. 

To one fliirly beyond the circle of political intrigue and blind 
interest, who casts an earnest glance over the relation of Brit- 
ain to her Western Islands since the Emancipation Act, the 
whole matter seems to beam out in perfect clearness. We 
have reflected somevrhat upon the subject, and shall venture a 
few suggestions toward defining the duty of Britain to those 
Negroes with whom she is connected. 

First of all, it is necessary that we have a new Emancipa- 
tion Act. We speak with perfect deliberation. It is neces- 
sary for us to emancipate our slaves iu Cuba, the Brazils, and 
America. With a look of magnanimity, justice, and love, 
Britain unchained her slaves : with a superb generosity, she 
paid down twenty millions, and washed from her hands the 
stain of blood. The nations of the earth looked on in admira- 
tion ; from the four corners of the world came shouts of ap- 
plause. It seemed indubitable that it had been an act of jus- 



184 wiLBER force; 

tice and humanity to the Negro. But the plaudits were pre- 
mature. If appearances could be trusted, it was not the Negro 
but herself Britain had spared. She laid down her own whip, 
but, whether in imbecility or sentimentality, again took it up, 
loaded it afresh, and put it into the hand of the Spaniard or 
American. There are two ways of keeping a slave; either by 
feeding and lodging him that he may till your own ground, or 
paying another certain moneys for keeping and working him. 
Britain emancipated the West Indian slaves : the sugar pro- 
duce of her colonies declined ; she opened or kept open her 
markets to slave-grown sugar ; precisely the quantity of sugar 
she could not receive from the V/est Indies, she received from 
Cuba and the Brazils. What occasioned the diminution of 
sugar in the British Colonies 1 The diminution of toil bearing 
on the slave. What enabled the other slave-holding sugar-lands 
to increase their produce, so as to meet the new demand of the 
British market "? One of two things, or both, exhaust the pos- 
sibilities of the case : addition to the number of slaves, or an 
increase of toil, imposed on slaves already possessed, exactly 
equivalent to the diminution of work in the British plantations. 
We are not here, reader, laying down any thing difficult or ab- 
struse ; we are not even arguing ; we are expressing an abso- 
lute common-place ; we defy any man, who has ever read a 
book or reflected an hour on political economy, to question 
what we state. By the continual communication of all parts 
of the commercial world, by an action and reaction inevitable 
and speedy, when you have any article of commerce for which 
there is a known and steady demand, the withdrawal of a body 
of laborers from one field where it is produced will occasion 
their addition in another field. When Britian set free her 
Negroes in the West Indies, and still kept open her market to 
slave-growing sugar, she simply appointed a set of Spanish or 



AND THE DEVELOPMEXT OF PHILANTHROPY. 185 

Brazilian overseers to starve, to lash, and to murder her slaves. 
It was by the laws of commerce impossible for her really to 
emancipate a body of slaves equal in number to those employed 
in her colonies, to Trithdraw her contingent from the slave- 
chain of the "world, in any but one way — by closing her mar- 
kets to all slave-grown sugar. By any other expedient, she 
simply exchanged one body of slaves for another. Tlie Emanci- 
pation Act was noble in intent, fine in example, and beautiful 
as a proof of national generosity ; but in mitigating the woes 
of the Negro race, considered as a whole, it was then, and has 
since been, null, and worse. We appeal to any political econo- 
mist in the British Empire, whether this conclusion is not a 
mathematical certainty. 

When we consider the amount of injustice, of useless, sense- 
less, gross injustice, inflicted on our colonies in this business — 
when we think of the state of those glorious islands flung to 
rot there on the ocean, while Britain, like an insane beldame, 
cherished elsewhere that for which she had ruined them — we 
can say only, in sickness of heart, that it is unspeakable. ]\Ir. 
Carlyle rails at the " Dismal Science ;■' but we can not cease to 
lament, despite his scorn, that there was not even that faint 
knowledge of the simplest laws of the commercial system of 
the world in the jDublic mind of Britain, which would have 
saved us this humiliating state of affairs. 

Let all who desire Slave Emancipation rally to one cr}^, and 
demand one measure, The exclusion of slave-grown produce 
from the British Isles. We have no choice, if we would do 
any thing, beyond this ; keej) your market open, and your num- 
ber of slaves is the same. India may give us cotton ; our own 
islands, if rightly managed, will give us enough of sugar : but, 
however we do, there is now blood on our hands — blood most 
cruelly, most inhumanly shed. As matters stand, all our abol- 



186 W I L B E R F p. C E ; 

ition lecturing will not abate the minutest particle of slavery ; 
if we have the national heroism to pass the above measure, we 
may entertah a good hope of giving slavery its death-blow 
over the world. 

Let no one here desecrate the name of Free Trade, by mak- 
ing it a plea for oppression and iniquity. It is not a ques- 
tion either of free trade or protection ; it is simply whether we 
are to have slaves or no : we can emancipate them only in one 
way. 

But we turn now to the Negroes in our Indian Colonies. 
Were the great measure passed which we have specified, there 
would be hope for them ; while matters are as they stand, we 
can hardly entertain any. The only admissible mode of pro- 
cedure, however, seems simple enough. While recognized, in 
an unqualified sense, as our fellow-subjects, Negroes must 
certainly be taught to imbibe habits of industry worthy of 
British citizens. It is competent for every government, in a 
mild but resolute manner, to put in force the ancient rule, that 
he who does not work shall not eat. As Mr. Carlyle says 
truly, the Negro has no right to run riot in idleness, and live 
on soil which British valor, at least in one sense, won, without 
paying a fair price for it : no British subject has such a right, 
and he can plead no allowable privilege. This is the first step 
which renders an industrial education practicable. A whole 
system of such education might gradually arise, and, by a na- 
tural, easy, and benign process, a free and industrious, a health- 
ful and joyous colored population might again make these 
islands like polished and glittering gems on the breast of 
ocean. 

And it is our decided opinion that there might, with the best 
effects, be an importation from Africa of free blacks into the 
West Indies. Mr. Carlyle's argument against this is singular. 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PII IL A NTH 11 O P Y. 187 

It proceeds on the hypothesis that, because somethmg is re- 
quired to be done in measure, it will be done in hideous and 
probably impossible excess. Ireland, such is his reasoning, 
does, or did suffer from, too large a population ; the West 
Indian Islands suffer from one by much too small : there- 
fore, if you introduce more men into the West Indies, you 
make it a black Ireland. Under which form of the syllogism 
is this to be ranged ? The case is rendered the more absurd by 
the fact that, since the project in question has reference solely 
to Blacks who would voluntarily push their fortune in the 
West Indies, the great danger would be, that the influx would 
stop far too soon. The Dismal Science could have given Mr. 
Carlyle a hint here too. 

But what errors soever we have fallen into since the measure 
for the emancipation of our West Indian slaves was passed, 
and how ineffectual soever the ignorance of its framers may 
have rendered that measure itself, its value as a national act 
was not lost. To the principles we have stated, it did testify ; 
Britain did, to the best of her knowledge, free her bondmen ; 
and if it is now found to be an undeniable fact, that her knowl- 
edge was so defective that her attempt, instead of being an alle- 
viation of the miseries of the negro race as a whole, w^as, strictly 
speaking, the reverse, let us hope the cause of real Slave 
Emancipation may again meet a response in British generosity, 
humanity, and valor, and again find Christian champions like 
Clarkson, Buxton, and Wilberforce. 

There has been not a little discussion as to the respective 
exertions of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others, in the attain- 
ment of their common object. To this controversy we shall 
contribute not one word. We saw that Wilberforce accepted, 
as part of the work appointed him by God, the conduct of the 
struggle for the abolition, and we saw him, when the Slave 



188 wilberforce; 

Trade was no more devoutly thanking God for having honored 
him to bear his pan in the work. But, in what shares soever 
the trophies of the victory be distributed to individuals, it is 
just to claim the whole achievement as a triumph of Chris- 
tianity. Ramsay, whose book, published toward the close of 
the last century, was the prelude to the agitation, was a Chris- 
tian pastor ; Clarkson and Wilberforce both toiled under the 
direct commission of Christian love. To such an extent, Chris- 
tianity did color our national councils. In the former century, the 
love of the Gospel had shed its mild light in the dungeon ; it now 
spoke an emphatic word against slavery, a word which, however 
little it may have yet availed, will assuredly not die away until 
that foul stain of shame and guilt is wiped from the brow of hu- 
manity. All that was of real value in the measure was its tes- 
timony, on the part of the first nation in the world, to justice and 
love : that testimony was priceless ; and it was the m.ight of 
Christianity which dresv it forth. What was defective and neu- 
tralizing in its provisions was unseen by all ; the divine prin- 
ciples which acted in its attainment were perfectly independent 
of that ; all the world, as well as its Christian movers, thought it 
was a real emancipation, and not an exchange. But every noble 
mind, every heart touched with poetic fire or raised by philo- 
sophic ardor, hailed it with instant and exultant applause. Cow- 
per, Coleridge, Byron, Schlegel, Fichte, and a list of such, em- 
bracing, with probably not a solitary exception, all the greatness 
and nobleness of the close of last century and the commencement 
of this, declared Slave Emancipation to be a high and glorious 
aim and achievement ; Mr. Carlyle was, we think, the very first 
man of genius and nobleness, both unquestioned, to hint a 
doubt regarding the fundamental principles which animated 
Clarkson and Wilberforce. iVnd whatever scorn or gratuitous 
insulting pity may accompany her path, we accept it as an 



AXD THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 189 

auspicious omen, that the form in which Christianity has walked 
forth most pron.inently in the sight of nations in these hatter 
ages has again been that of love ; we will recognize her even 
by that railing, and know of a certainty that she is about her 
natural and peculiar work, when she brings hope to the prisoner 
and freedom to the slave. 

We arrive now at the second portion of that twofold task 
which Wilberforce believed to be appointed him by God. 
This was the reformation of manners. The method to be 
adopted was that of public exposure and philanthropic appeal. 
The force of Christian love, scattered in countless bosoms in 
the British Islands, was to become, as it were, conscious of 
itself, to gather together and unite: when this was accom- 
plished, it was to turn in concentrated j^ower against evil, in 
whatever form and place it appeared, either by bringing its in- 
fluence to bear directly on the legislature, or by local and per- 
sonal endeavors. His efforts mark the commencement of the 
second stage of philanthropy ; the fire was to spread wide, and 
the attempt was to be made to give it form and union. 

We can here, again, while yielding perfect approbation, be- 
stow but a qualified applause upon Wilberforce, as the leader 
and representative of what, if you choose, you may call Exeter 
Hall Philanthropy. The part he played can be easily compre- 
hended. Wherever there germinated a scheme of benevolence, 
he cast on it a glance of encouragement ; whoever designed, 
by voluntary efforts on the part of himself and his fellows, to 
benefit any part of the human race, looked toward Wilber- 
force, nor looked in vain. But, afler all, he was rather the 
principal worker in philanthropy, than its organizing, ordering, 
compelling chief; for him we still wait. To discern, by far- 
reaching and unerring glance, the real force and the real perils 
of this wide-spread benevolence, this many-worded spirit of 



190 wilberforce; 

kindness, that gathered its assemblies and spoke on its plat- 
forms; to connect it, as a great phenomenon, with the grand 
characteristics of our age ; to be a head to its great throbbing 
heart, an eye to its hundred, earth-embracing hands, was not 
given to Wilberforce. Philanthropy, under him, was aptly 
and expressively emblemed by that motley throng which Sir 
James Stephen so graphically depicts swarming in the cham- 
bers of his house ; a number of living and embodied forces, 
some of whim, some of folly, some of mere maudlin softness, 
all inclined to do good, and complacently concluding that good 
intentions would pass for substantial working power. But we 
by no means allege that it was a slight or profitless work which 
Wilberforce did. Unless you Imow how to direct your motive 
power, you will do no work ; but unless you^ have your mo- 
tive power, you are in a still more hopeless case. He, and the 
right-hearted men who were around him, fanned into a flame 
which covered Britain with that spirit of active love wliich the 
holy Howard evoked. To consider the value of this service 
open to discussion, seems to deny every instinct man feels, 
every rule by which he acts. If a man says that it is not a 
consoling, an auspicious fact, that in a million breasts there is 
awakened the will, the bare will, to work and war for the dif- 
fusion of light over our world, for the social and moral amel- 
ioration of men, wc know not how to answer him. If a man, 
contemplating the great temptation which, by necessity of po- 
sition, assails Britain in these ages, the temptation to circum- 
scribe the blue vault by an iron grating, and beneath it, as in a 
temple, kneel before the shrine of Mammon, finds no healing, 
counteracting influence in the spectacle of thousands of British 
hands stretched out to take Mammon's gold and lay it on a 
higher altar, we can not assail, as we can not conceive, his po- 
sition. If any one does not perceive that there is an infinite 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 19] 

difference, and that a difference of advantage and advance be- 
tween a nation, slothful and avaricious, that will do and give 
nothing in the cause of God and humanity, and a nation saying, 
" I will give, I ivill act, and if I know not how, I will earnestly 
hear," we can merely signify dumb astonishment. Had phi- 
lanthropy hitherto done nothing, its presence in the common- 
wealth were a blessing as of the early rain ; if it has in certain 
directions fallen into error, it is both a commonplace and a 
fatal mistake to cast away good with evil ; an error not com- 
mitted, save by madmen, in other departments, for you do not 
cast away your sword for its rust, or your scythe because it is 
not hung with perfect scientific accuracy. But philanthropy, 
Exeter Hall Philanthropy, has done much. YVe can not con- 
sider as nothing the alleviation of the woes of factory children, 
the erection of ragged schools, the providing of shelter for the 
houseless, of food for the starving ; we can not consider it little 
to have sown the world with Bibles ! Since the day when 
Howard called it forth, as a power distinctly to be seen and 
felt in human affiiirs, its progress has been one before which 
oppression has fillen, its step has startled cruelty and crime. 
God has honored it hitherto, and he will bless it still. 

But however well it may be to express the plain truth, and 
however lawful to draw encouragement therefrom, it is cer- 
tainly of more strict practical avail to clear the way for future 
work, than to rejoice over what has been done. We shall offer 
a few leading suggestions bearing on the internal and operating 
mechanism of philanthropy. We shall be very brief, leaving 
readers to follow out our ideas for themselves. 

First of all, it must be clearly and definitely understood 
what this wide-spread benevolence, in its strict nature, is ; we 
mean, as an agent for producing actual work. Emotion of 
every sort, all that portion, so to speak, of the mind which 



192 wiLBER force; 

generates action, is simply a force ; whether it does good or 
evil, depends entirely on how it is directed. Steam lies for 
ages unknown as a moving power ; then for ages it is used 
merely in mines and coal-pits; at last it unites all lands by its 
iron highways, quickening the very pulse of the world, and 
making man finally victorious over every element. The ten- 
derest pity, the most ardent love, can never be ought but a 
steam power ; you must know precisely how to use it, or it 
steads you not. Nay, such a thing is plainly possible as that 
the force should do evil instead of good. In Hannibal's army 
at Zama, the elephants were turned back upon his own troops ; 
it had been better if he had had no elephants. 

This is a principle which, when stated in terms, no one will 
deny ; but it is of vital importance, and is very apt to be prac- 
tically lost sight of. The excellence of a man's sentiment is 
apt to cast a delusive brightness over his thought ; when we 
listen to one whom we know to be a good man, the fervor of 
whose spirit delights and inspires, we feel it a thankless and 
ungrateful task to bring his schemes under the dry light of 
reason, and tell him that they are naught. Yet, when we come 
into contact with fact and reality, emotion goes for nothing ; 
good intention is whiffed aside ; no music of applause, no gild- 
ing of oratory, will keep the sinking ship afloat ; it settles 
down like a mere leaky cask. Philanthropists must learn to 
look deeper than the first aspect of a project, to examine its 
ulterior bearings, to see how it allies itself with social laws ; 
they must accustom themselves to resist the soft charm of 
plausible eloquence, to examine the bare truth advocated, and 
to discern and accept this truth when recommended by no elo- 
quence, and scarcel}^ caught from stammering lips. 

Our second suggestion is this. That philanthropy should clear 
its eyesight by an acquaintance with that science which has for 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 193 

its object the laws of our social system. We care not how you 
name this science ; call it sociology, or political economy, or 
what you please ; we merely say, that since all human affiiirs 
are inextricably interwoven, no man can rightfully hold himself 
entitled to put his hand to any part of the social fabric, with- 
out knowing how his act will affect other parts. There are 
only two possible hypotheses on which the science of which we 
speak could be attacked ; that there are no laws in economic 
and social matters, or that they are so profoundly mysterious, 
that an attempt to know them is prima facie absurd. The first, 
no one, we suppose, since the days of Bacon, would maintain. 
The second might be urged with some faint show of reason ; 
but we are convinced it is radically unsound. The freaks of 
individual will are countless ; the soul of man is certainly the 
one thing, of all we know, which comes nearest to giving us 
the idea of infinitude ; but it is assuredly true, on the other 
hand, that there are certain great laws which may be discerned 
acting in man's life from age to age, and that their general ac- 
tion may be traced and depended on. Political economy can 
be attacked by no arguments which do not militate against 
science in general ; and to answer an argument leveled against 
modern science, would certainly be giving a sufficient reason 
to every reader to close our book. We think a little calm re- 
flection will induce readers to agree, in what is with us a pro- 
found conviction, that philanthropy ought more and more to 
ally itself with social science, and that the happiest results may 
be looked for from the union. 

Our last suggestion is perhaps the most important of all : it 
refers to the precise mode of going to work ; to the manner in 
which agencies are to be made effective. And if we have hith- 
erto ventured to oppose Mr. Carlyle, we now turn round and 
take an arrow from his quiver. In every case where work is 

9 



194 WILBERFORCEJ 

to be done, let the whole power of all engaged be broiignt to 
bear to this end — to get 7neii to do it. The whole might of 
Mr. Carlyle's genius has been bent to the proclamation of one 
great truth — the sumless worth of a man. Every thing else is 
dead. Constitutions of absolute theoretic perfection, laws of 
faultless equity, riches and armies beyond computation, will 
be of themselves of no avail ; men may put fire into these, 
but these will never fill the place of men. And the operations 
of the Bible Society have, we believe, given the greatest con- 
firmation to Mr. Carlyle's words on this point ever furnished 
in the history of the world, or possibly to be furnished. It 
has given us one other proof that it is by man God will con- 
vert the world ; the Bible itself, when alone, has not supplied 
the want. Here is the difficulty of difficulties. You can get 
gold by subscription ; but a man of real power, of piety, flic- 
ulty, energy, can not be subscribed for. It is by the eye 
cleared and sharpened by long experience he can be recognized ; 
it is by the sagacious, powerful man, that the man of power is 
known ; imbecility, seated on a mountain of gold, can do 
nothing here. And yet, till you get your men, nothing is 
done ; if you give your gold to bad or incompetent men, it 
were tetter that you flung it into the Thames. It must be fixed 
as an axiom in the heart of every philanthropist and philan- 
thropic society, that this is the point of absolute success or ab- 
solute failure ; it must be fairly comprehended, that it can not 
be attained by mere examining of reports or any other me- 
chanical process, although, indeed, each of these may contribute 
its aid; only, never for a moment is it to be forgotten that it 
must be done. Perhaps the great secret of getting at a prac- 
tical test and assurance in this matter, lies in the discovery of 
some readily applicable method of ascertaining the real effects 
of a man's work in the sphere to which you appoint him. 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 195 

Offices might never be at first given for a permanence ; by a 
continual casting away of the incompetent, the truly competent 
might gradually be found. We suspect this were the only in- 
fallible method. We are not blind to its difficulties, but any 
difficulties must be encountered in the only way to life, and for 
the avoidance of a death the more ghastly for its " affectation 
of life." If all the men employed by philanthropy, in its un- 
numbered schemes of instruction, were godly, earnest, and 
able men, what a power for good were then acting in our coun- 
try and to the ends of the earth ! Then would Mr. Carlyle 
have no w^ord of objection to offer ; nay, we believe he would 
heartily applaud, for we know well his nobleness, and that 
nothing would delight him so much as to be dazzled by a light 
of his own kindling. 

We think these suggestions, of capital importance to the 
future advancement and real success of philanthropy. But 
they are, as we have here given them, to be looked upon in 
the light of finger-posts, indicating the way toward com23re- 
hensive reform, rather than unfolding the methods of such. 
Enough for us, if we have thrown out a few hints which may 
be of practical avail toward consolidating, invigorating, and 
ultimately extending its operations. If it is, on the hypothesis 
that it is attainable, and that work can be done by its agency, 
a noble form of exertion which arises from union, sympathy, 
and the power of moral suasion, let us recognize a truly effect- 
ive force in philanthropy. If pestilent babblers will endeavor 
to possess our platforms, and to substitute mere ignorance and 
sentimentality for knowledge and true manly compassion, let 
men of real power, by the might of those clear, strong words 
which an English audience really loves, strike them into harm- 
less silence or benignant shame. If it is a fact, so boldly writ- 
ten on the forehead of our age, that its denial is an absurdity, 



196 wilbekforce; 

and so firmly impressed upon our modern forms of life, that 
its alteration were an attempt to hide the steam-engine, to bury 
the press, to raze from the annals of man the French Ke volu- 
tion, that the voice of public opinion, whether right or wrong, 
does now rule Great Britain, let no true, and bold, and earnest 
man among us disdain to speak into the j^ublic ear by those 
thousand channels which determine the sound of that voice. 
Let Exeter Hall stand ; shut no door where men are wont to 
assemble to listen to men ; but let every one who listens there 
scrutinize and judge in the awe of a fearful responsibility, and 
let every one speak as before God. When one surveys society 
in our days, and lays to heart how it is guided, he does not fail 
to learn, that the task of speaking words to a human assem- 
blage just at present, is as the task of holding the lightnings. 

The conduct of the opposition to the Slave Trade, and the 
perpetual promotion and superintendence of philanthropic op- 
erations, were those aspects of the life of Wilberforce which 
first caught the eye, and stood out most boldly to the public 
gaze. Yet, perhaps, it is by somewhat altering our point of 
view that we gain a full and clear comprehension at once of 
the character in which he really was most serviceable to his 
country, of the fountain whence each separate stream of his 
activity flowed, and of the highest lesson his walk conveys. 
Regard him in his sole capacity as a Christian man ; look upon 
him as he moves in the circles of parliamentary ambition, in 
the full influence of that icy glitter which is the light and the 
warmth of those high regions. You then see how living Chris- 
tianity, unassisted by the might of talent, can bear itself in the 
midst, of political excitement and intrigue ; you may then 
judge whether those ancient arms, the shield of faith, the 
helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, have lost 
their heavenly temper. 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF T IIIL ANTIIRO P Y . 197 

You find that, during his whole life, these never fail him. 
From fashion, and its loud pretense of joy, he turns aside ; the 
atmosphere of faction is too foul for his purified organs ; hold- 
ing by the standard of truth and godliness alone, he becomes 
himself a party. In a region unseen by the world, in the still- 
ness of the closet, where only the all-seeing Eye is upon him, 
he lays open the recesses of his soul, that divine light may pen- 
etrate and pervade its every chamber ; there, on his knees be- 
fore God, he laments for secret sins, and pleads for holiness in 
his inner life ; he looks earnestly and with severe honesty 
within ; searching his heart with the Word of God as with a 
candle, that there may lurk in it no thought or feeling to exalt 
itself against the Most High. He then goes into Parliament 
and the world. By the gleam of the gold, it is seen that it has 
been purified by celestial fire ; his light shines before men ; 
they acknowledge it to be a steadfast flame, untainted by the 
dim atmosphere in which it glows, and ever pointed to heaven ; 
they are compelled to glorify the God whom he serves. He 
embodies the simple might of goodness ; the serene majesty 
of light. He shows what that politician has vv^on whose political 
scheme is briefly this, that he will follow the Lord fully, and 
proves what a rectifying, healing, irradiating power in human 
affairs is the awakened and vivid consciousness of immediate 
relationship to the Creator. He touches every question with 
the Ithuriel spear of Christian truth, and the falsehood in it 
starts forth as by irresistible compulsion in ifcs own image. 
And so, where the subject suggests doubt, where soft folds of 
plausibility are drawn over moral delinquency, or the shifting 
meteor of expediency offers itself for the pole-star of duty, men 
turn to Wilberforce ; look on this, they say, with your eye, we 
believe it has been purified by a light divine. 

To trace the various phases in which this distinctive godliness 



198 WILBE II FORCE ; 

manifested itself in his parliamentary career, and to exhibit 
the various testimonies given to its heavenly virtue by the 
men with whom he worked, were to detail his actings from 
his twenty-sixth year. One instance serves for a thousand. 

We have all heard of the impeachment of Melville. Of his 
perfect innocence, or partial delinquency, it is not the place to 
speak. However it was, the case was one of profound interest 
in Parliament, and ministers were extremely anxious to screen 
him. Wilberforce was doubly drawn to come to a conclusion 
favorable to him. His heart was naturally of a delicately ten- 
der and kindly order, and his old friend Pitt had set his heart 
on clearing Melville. He examined the matter ; but could 
not suppress the consciousness of grave doubts. He listened 
eagerly to the explanations offered by the ministers, when the 
discussion came on in Parliament ; looking into them with 
the piercing flash of English shrewdness, quickened by godly 
earnestness, he saw, or thought he saw, them burned up as grass 
by lightning : he hesitated not a moment, but rose to his feet. 
The eye of Pitt was on him, with the pleading of affection, and 
the authority of possessed esteem ; he felt the fascination of its 
gaze. But he faltered not : he spoke the bold, unmeasured 
words of Christian honor ; he went against ministers, and con- 
demned Melville. His words fell on an attentive house ; 
the number of votes he influenced was named at forty ; min- 
isters were defeated. It was felt that in a question of sim- 
ple integrity, where casuistry had to be eluded, and plausibility 
swept aside, Wilberforce was the last authority. In the British 
senate in the nineteenth century, when a point of morality had 
to be settled, it was not to the man of poor duelling " honor," 
it was not to the philosophic moralist, it was not to the up- 
right merchant, men looked for a decision : it was to the Chris- 
tian senator, v/hose code was his Bible, and who walked in 



AND THE DEVE OPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 199 

childlike simplicity, by the old conversion light. Consider the 
number of opinions represented in that assembly, and then es- 
timate the weight and worth of this testimony. 

Thus did Wilberforce, in his station in public affairs, con- 
spicuously manifest to man the fresh and prevailing power of 
living Christianity, and testify its superiority to every other 
light. The book which he published was just the same testi- 
mony expressed in words. To criticise, however briefly, the 
" View of Practical Christianity," were now perfectly out of 
date. It was marked by no peculiar traits of genius, by no 
originality of thought or style. But it was clear, explicit, 
warm, and animated ; over it all breathed the fervor of love 
and the earnestness of faith ; it was an attempt to urge the 
pure Gospel on the fashionable and worldly, and hold it, to use 
Milton's superb language, in their faces like a mirror of dia- 
mond, that it might dazzle and pierce their misty eyeballs. 
And mankind did consent to listen to its pleading ; it went 
round the world : very few books have been so widely popular. 
It was published in 1797. 

Respecting the domestic life of Wilberforce, we require to 
say very little. Biography treats of the influences which mold 
character, of the influences which character exerts ; if, in the 
circle of private life, there is any important element of influ- 
ence, it must be noted ; but, if biography were to regard a man 
not as before the world but as in his family, it would at once 
descend from the office of instructress to every noble faculty, 
and accept the miserable function of pampering a small and 
unmanly curiosity. The domestic life of Wilberforce was of 
that happy sort which defies long description. It can be but 
in rare cases tha.t the description of the course of a river, if 
given mile by mile, is interesting ; even Wordsworth can not 
persuade us to trace with him, more than once, the course of 



200 WILBERFOECE ; 

that DuddoD, at whose every winding he has erected a mile- 
stone in form of a sonnet. The river rose among green craggy 
mountains ; in its joyful youth, it was the playmate of sun- 
beams, the dimpling, wavering, sparkling child, that dallied 
with the zephyrs, or leaped over the precipice, wreathing its 
sno^vy neck in rainbows ; as if in the strength of youth and 
manhood it flowed long through a bounteous and lordly cham- 
paign, of cornfield and woodland, resting calmly in the noon- 
day sun, listening to the reaper's song ; it widened into a 
peaceful estuary, its force becoming ever less, and in a silent 
balmy evening, lost itself in a placid ocean. This is all we 
wish to know about the river. Much the same is it in such a 
case as that before us. Wilberforce's boyhood, manhood, and 
old age, are aptly figured by such a sketch as this, and we de- 
sire to know little more about them. 

At the age of thirty-eight, he married ; of the particular cir- 
cumstances and nature of his affection we are unable to speak ; 
but we know that his was a happy family, and that a con- 
geniality in the highest tastes bound him in sympathizing af- 
fection to his wife. In the arm-chair, or at the festal board, he 
was seen to the greatest advantage. By reading what he has 
left us, we can evidently form no idea of what he was either 
in Parliament or in his home. He expressly tells us that he 
did not succeed with his pen ; that the quickening excitement 
of society, the genial impulse of speech, caused his ideas to 
start forth in more vivid colors, in quicker and more natural 
sequence : and we know that the particular power of both the 
orator and the Avit, partakes so much of the nature of a flavor 
of an undefined and incommunicable essence, that a fame in 
that sort must always depend well-nigh entirely on testimony. 
A witticism without the glance that lent it fire, is often the 
dew-pearl without its gleam, a mere drop of water. But we 



A'SB THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 201 

can not doubt for a moment that the social powers of Wilber- 
force were of an extraordinary order. The two qualities 
whose combination gives probably the most engaging manner 
possible, are tenderness and quick sympathy ; the instanta- 
neous apprehension of what is said, and its reception into the 
arms of a tender, sympathizing interest. Wilberforce had 
both. His heart was very tender. To go from the country 
to the town, would affect him to tears. When John Wesley 
stood up and gave him his blessing, he wept. We have seen 
how he gave his testimony against Melville : hear now how 
they afterward met ; we quote Wilberf6rce's own words : 
" We did not meet for a long time, and all his connections 
most violently abused me. About a year before he died, we 
met in the stone passage which leads from the Horse Guards 
to the Treasury. We came suddenly upon each other, just in 
the open air, where the light struck upon our faces. We saw 
one another, and at first I thought he was passing on, but he 
stopped and called out, 'Ah, Wilberforce, how do you do V 
and gave me a hearty shake by the hand. I would have given 
a thousand pounds for that shake." A generous and tender 
nature, capable of rich enjoyment. But he was also of keen 
apprehension, and for every thing in nature or man he had a 
glance of sympathy ; provided always it lay in the sunlight, 
provided it had no guilt or baseness in it. Can we wonder 
that he was engaging 1 

It is easy to present Wilberforce to the eye of imagination 
seated in his arm-chair, the center of a pleased and mirthful 
throng. Diminutive in size, with features spare and sharp, 
with vivid, sparkling eye, he does not rest, but has a tendency 
to jerk and fidget; his face is piquant, mobile, varying in its 
lights and shades, like a hike in a sunny breezy April day. 
An idea is suggested by some one of the company ; a slight 
9* 



202 w I L B E r. 1/ .) li c E ; 

twinkle, an instantaneous change of light in his eye, shows 
he has caught it, and embraced it, and looked round and round 
it ; he tosses it about, as if from hands full of gold-dust, till in 
a few moments it is wrapped in new light and gilding — or he 
playfully transfixes it on the unpoisoned dart of a light, genial 
banter, shrewd and arch, which finds a way straight to the 
heart — or his face grows solemn, and he utters, unostentatiously 
but earnestly, a few devout words regarding it. Now his face 
is one free, indefinite, joyfid smile — now he mimicks some par- 
liamentary orator — now he is giving some little, graphic, faintly 
caustic sketch of character, with a sharp catching smile about 
his lips — and now he listens quietly, a tear in his eye. Sir 
James Stephen, who doubtless was intimately acquainted with 
"Wilberforce, compares his vivacity to Voltaire's, and sets his 
tenderness above that of Rousseau ; Madame de Stael pro- 
nounced him the wdttiest man in England. But we are con- 
vinced that the most entirely satisfactory and expressive idea 
of his whole manner to be possibly reached, is to be found in 
these words of Mackintosh, who visited him when advanced in 
life : " Do you remember Madame de Maintenon's exclamation, 
' Oh, the misery of having to amuse an old king, qui ri'est pas 
a/musahle P Now if I were called to describe Wilberforce in 
one word, I should say he was the most ' amusable' man I ever 
met with in my life. Instead of having to think what subjects 
Avill interest him, it is perfectly impossible to hit on one that 
does not. I never saw any one who touched life at so many 
points ; and this is the more remarkable in a man who is sup- 
posed to live absorbed in the contemplation of a future state. 
When he was in the House of Commons, he seemed to have 
the freshest mind of any man there. There was all the charm 
of youth about him. And he is quite as remarkable in this 
bright evening of his days, as when I saw him in his glory 
mp.ny years ago." 



AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF PH I L A N T H 11 O P Y. 203 

The concluding years of his life were calm and beauuful. 
He spent them at liis country residence of Highwood. More 
and more his eye turned toward the home he was now near- 
ing ; through his vivacitj^, through his still fresh activity, there 
shone more and more the softening, mellowing light of holiness. 
He loved to expatiate under the open sky, to watch the dew- 
drops, to gaze long and with unsated delight upon flowers, the 
rising gratitude and delight of his soul flowing forth in the 
words in which King David voiced similar feelings on the bat- 
tlements of Zion, three thousand years ago. " Surely," he 
would say, " flowers are the smiles of God's goodness." 

In 1832, he passed tranquilly into his rest. 

Richly gifted by nature, Wilberforce never repaired the 
waste and dissipation of his fiiculties in those years when a 
man ought to be undergoing a serious and methodic education. 
The mighty intellectual powers were not his : the strength of 
far-reaching, penetrating thought, the comprehensive and 
ordered memory, the imagination of inevitable eye and crea- 
tive hand. Unless that perpetual glow of feeling, that free and 
exuberant fertility of wit, that natural power of eloquence and 
acting, come within the strained limits of a definition of genius, 
he certainly had none. But in the evening of his days he 
could look over his life, and recall the hour when he had de- 
voted himself to the Saviour, and thank God, without hy- 
pocrisy, that he had been enabled in measure to perform his 
vow. His life was not ineffective or dark; it was spent in the 
noblest manner in which a man can live, in advancing the 
glory of earth's eternal King, by blessing that creature man 
whom He has appointed its king in time ; and over it there 
lies divine grace, uniting, harmonizing, beautifying all, like the 
bow of God's covenant. 



204 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILANTHROPY. 

In treating our next biographic subject, we are furnislied 
with a fitting opportunity of noting, in certain important and 
suggestive particulars, the general mode in which the social 
relations would shape themselves out in a state of Christian 
freedom. Our glance here becomes wider ; we touch upon the 
vital question of the relation between man and man, as free 
and equal members of one commonwealth ; and we are thus 
appropriately introduced to our final chapter. 



CHAPTER IV. 

budgett: the christian freeman. 

What is that one point in which nature surpasses all novelists 
and depictors of character, and by their relative approach to 
which, all such are to be ranked, from Shakespeare downward ? 
It is the union of variety with consistency. To draw the man 
of one idea is easy : you have just to represent him, in all cir- 
cumstances however distracting, with his thoughts running in 
one channel ; on all occasions however irrelevant, introducing 
his favorite topic ; and, unseduced by any evils incurred or 
benefits foregone, spending health and wealth in the indulgence 
of his propensity. Don Quixote, Mr. Shandy, and my be- 
loved Uncle Toby, are models in this sort. To draw the man 
who is a bundle of inconsistencies is also easy : to attain this, 
you have simply to pay no attention to what your character, 
as an individual, either says or does, putting your own opinions, 
on all subjects, into his mouth, making him act, in all cases, just 
as the hour suggests, and always exacting from him the hero- 
ism to abandon his own individuality, to contradict himself in 
opinion and action, in order to advance your plot, or bring you 
out of a difficulty. Now, nature never produces a man whose 
whole existence is simply and solely one idea, although she 
comes very near it ; for the most part her way is to give men 
a large variety of qualities, opinions, powers : the man of ab- 
solute inconsistency she never produces at ill : her oAvn unat- 



206 BUDGET!' : THE CHRISTIAN F R E E il A N. 

tamable skill is shown in the delicate graduation and adjust- 
ment of powers, so that they can live at peace in one bosom, 
and the man is a single personal identity. As she has struck 
a beautiful harmony in the senses, so that, in their variety, they 
result in unity, so does she unite variety with unity in the in- 
dividual character ; her men are not single lines, nor does she 
piece together contradictions ; weakness and strength in action, 
unless each is fitful, warmth and coldness of heart, clearness 
and obscurity of intellect, generosity and niggardliness of dis- 
position, never co-exist. We deem this an important princi- 
ple both in criticism and biography. Macaulay and Sir James 
Stephen have noted nature's variety, but we do not remember 
to have seen the whole truth of her variety in consistency 
stated. Shylock, cited by Macaulay, shows indeed many 
passions : but they are of a household ; they have all a hell- 
ish scowl; hatred, revenge, avarice, fanaticism, darken his 
brow and eye, but they admit no alien gleam from love, for- 
giveness, or generosity ; he is just such a character as nature 
would produce, and as he Y>ho held the mirror up to nature 
could paint. So it is in every other case instanced by Mr. 
Macaulay, and so it must always be in nature. To expound 
fully, and apply the principle, might make a valuable chapter 
in criticism. But biography, and not criticism, is our present 
business. The dramatist or novelist, and the biographer differ 
in this ; the former have for their aim to attain, amid diversity, 
a natural harmony ; the latter has nature's unity given, and 
his task is to show how its variations cohere and are consist- 
ent. When, after fair scrutiny, you find a character, in a novel 
or drama, acting inconsistently, decide that the author is so far 
incompetent ; when you see a man in life acting in a manner 
which appears to you contradictory, conclude you do not un- 
derstand him. To our task. 



BUDGE it: the CHRISTIAN FREEMAN. 207 

About the beginning of this century there was, at the village 
school of Kimmersden, near Coleford, in Somersetshire, a boy 
about ten years of age. He had been born at Wrington, an- 
other Somersetshire village, in 1794, of poor shop-keeping 
people, who seem to have been hard put to it to find a liveli- 
hood ; for they went from village to village, seeking a sure 
though humble maintenance, and it was only after many a shift 
that they opened a little general shop in Coleford. He was in 
some respects distinguished from his fellows. One day he 
picked up a horse-shoe, went with it three miles, and got a 
penny for it. He managed to lay together one or two other 
pennies, and commenced trading among his school-fellows. 
Lozenges, marbles, and so forth, were his wares. He sold to 
advantage, and his capital increased. By calculation on the 
prices charged in the shops, by buying in large and selling in 
small quantities, by never losing an opportunity or wasting a 
penny, by watching for bargains and stiffly insisting on adher- 
ence to their terms, he laid shilling to shilling, and pound to 
pound, until, at the age of fifteen, he was master of thirty 
pounds sterling. The spectacle can not be called pleasing. A 
boy, whose feelings should have shared in the exuberance and 
free generosity of youth, converted into a premature skinflint 
and save-all ; the frosty prudence of life's autumn crisping and 
killing the young leaflets and budding blossoms of life's spring ; 
a rivulet in the mountains already banked and set to turn a 
mill ; — surely the less we hear of such a boy the better — was 
he born with a multiplication table in his mouth 1 This boy's 
name was Samuel Budgett. 

A touch of romance is a salutary ingredient in character, in 
boyhood and youth it is particularly charming ; but there is a 
possibility it may go too far, and a sentimental, tearful child, 
who is always giving some manifestation of the finer feelings 



208 budgett: ibe christian freeman. 

of the heart, borders on the intolerable. There was at this 
same Kimmersden school (even in village schools variety of 
character will come out) a boy who seemed to be somewhat 
of this sort. When a little money came into his possession, 
he bought Wesley's Hymns, and of a summer evening you 
might have seen him walking in the fields, reciting his favorite 
pieces with intense enjoyment. His mother was once danger- 
ously ill, and his father sent him on horseback, in the night, for 
medical assistance ; as he rode back, in the breaking morning, 
he heard a bird sing in the park by the wayside ; he listened in 
strange delight, and seemed to receive some tidings from the 
carol. On reaching home, he went to his sister, and gravely 
informed her that he knew their mother would recover, that 
God had answered his prayers on her account, and that this 
had become known to him as he heard a little bird sing in 
Mells Park that morning. Not one boy in a thousand — we 
speak with deliberation — would have marked that bird's song. 
On another day, you might have observed him coming along a 
lane on horseback ; as you looked, you saw that he was not 
thinking of his horse or his way ; his eyes had an abstracted 
look, though animated and filled with tears ; the bridle had 
fallen from his hand, and his horse was quietly eating grass. 
He was at the moment in reverie ; he was dreaming himself a 
missionary in far lands; and the tears streamed down his 
cheeks as he knelt among tropical bushes, under a southern 
sun, to implore blessing on the household he had left at home. 
Such was the sentimental scholar of Kimmersden. And what 
was his name ! Samuel Budgett ! 

Nature had framed no contradiction. The boy's heart was 
tenderly afiectionate, his nature keenly sensitive, his sympa- 
thies rich, kindly, poetic : but his young eyes had seen nothing 
but struggling and penury in his father's house ; he had learned, 



budgett: the christian freeman. 209 

by natural shrevrdness and happy occasion, the lesson of thrift : 
he had a brain as clear and inventive as his heart was warm ; 
by accident or otherwise, the pleasurable exercise of his facul- 
ties in that juvenile trading commenced, and with the relish of 
a born merchant he followed out the game. Tlie money itself 
was little more to him than the men are to a born chess-player ; 
its accumulation merely testified that all worked well. The 
coalescence and relative position of the two sets of qualities 
were sometimes finely shown ; he wasted no money, yet he 
lost no time in buying Wesley's Hymns ; he amassed thirty 
pounds in a few years of boyish trading, but when the sum 
was complete he gave it all to his parents. 

Having come finally to the decision to be a merchant, and 
adopting it . as his ambition to raise his family to tolerably 
affluent circumstances, he was apprenticed at the age of fifleen 
to an elder brother, by a former marriage, who had a shop in 
^ingswood, a village four miles from Bristol. His education, 
now formally completed, had, in all relating to books, been 
meager enough. He had learned to read, write, and to some 
extent count ; no more. In other respects, it had been more 
thorough. He had already, in his boyish mercantile operations, 
served an apprenticeship to clearness of head, promptitude and 
firmness in action ; his father's house had been a school of rare 
excellence ; so rare, that, on the whole, flinging in Pocklington 
Academy, and St. John's College Oxford, and the Gallery of 
the House of Commons, into the opposite scale, we do not 
hesitate a moment in pronouncing his education superior to 
that of Wilberforce. In that house he saw honesty, industry, 
determination, and godliness ; he saw how severe the struggle 
for existence really is ; he saw how faculties must be worked 
in order to their effective exercise. Of special importance was 
that potion of his education which consisted in the influence of 



210 BUDGE tt: the christian freeman. 

his mother's godliness. He was still a child of nine, when he 
happened one day to saunter past her room; the door vras 
shut, and he heard her voice. She was engaged in prayer, and 
the subject of her petitions was her family. He heard his own 
name. His heart was at once touched, and from that moment 
it turned toward heaven. We deem it a very beautiful 
family incident. The heart of that mother was probably heavy 
at the moment, her eyes perhaps filled with tears ; yet God 
heard her, and on herself was bestowed the angelic office of 
answering her own prayer. Samuel Budgett went to appren- 
ticeship from his father's house, a steady, kindly, radically able, 
and religious youth. 

His apprenticeship was not such as to permit his habits of 
perseverant industry to be broken or to relax. He was at the 
counter by six in the morning, " and nine, ten, or eleven at 
night," were the ordinary hours of closing. The toil he under- 
went was such, that he used to speak of it till the close of his 
life. He was of small strength, and little for his years ; the 
exertion of the grocer's business was doubtless too much for 
him. He soon became a favorite with customers, his manner 
was so unaffectedly kind, his attention so close and uniform. 
It is interesting also to observe the keen thirst for knowledge 
which he displayed during those years. If he heard a sermon, 
he treasured it up like a string of pearls, and adjourned at its 
close to some sequestered place, to con it over, and lay it up 
in his inmost heart. "What books came in his way he eagerly 
devoured ; for poetry he showed a keen relish, and committed 
large portions to memory. He exclaims, almost in anguish, 
" O wisdom ! O knowledge ! — the very expressions convey 
ideas so delightful to the mind, that I am ready to leap out a.nd 
Jly ; for why should my ideas always be confined within the 
narrow compass of our shop walls ?" A shop-boy with so 



BUDGE TT: TaE CHRISTIAN FREEMAN. 211 

genuine and fixed an aspiration after knowledge will scarce fail 
to find education. The power to act nobly and effectively may 
exist with little book-knowledge : to know living men, to have 
sat long under the stern but thorough teaching of experience, 
to have a sympathy open to the unnumbered influences of ex- 
haustless and ever-healthful nature, may set a man above those 
who have studied all things at second-hand, as seen through 
other eyes, and represented by feeble human speech. Budgett 
had the faculty to work well; he was acquiring a thorough 
knowledge of men and a power to measure them at a glance ; 
he loved the open fields and sky, the summer woods and the 
river bank, and every smile and frown of the ever-changing 
but ever-expressive face of what the ancients well called our 
Mother Earth. About the time when his apprenticeship 
closed, in August, 1816, we find him writing thus to a friend : — 
" As it respects my coming to Trome, I thank you for your 
kind invitation. I have intended going ; but I assure you, 
when it comes to the point, I have no inclination to go any 
where ; for, if I can not find happiness at home, it is in vain to 
seek it any where else. I think if I were to come with the 
determination to enjoy the company of my friends, by going 
to any places of recreation or amusement, though I am very 
fond of such kind of engagements, particularly where religion 
and real happiness is the subject of conversation, yet it may 
tend rather to divert my mind from God as the source of my 
happiness, than unite it to him. But for one thing I have 
long felt an earnest though secret desire ; which is, to spend a 

little time with you and Mr. T alone, where no object 

but God could attract our attention ; that we may, by devout 
conversation, by humble, fervent, faithful prayer, get our souIp 
united to each other, and to God our living Head, by th« 
strongest ties of love and affection." The young man who write? 



212 BUDGE TT: the christian FllEEMAN. 

thus from behind a grocer's counter, has pretty well supplied 
the defects of his education ; in important respects he is edu- 
cated. The idea of the last sentence is that of the noblest pos- 
sible friendship ; we can look for no fairer spectacle than that 
of those three friends kneeling before God, that the celestial 
bond of a common love for Him may knit their hearts. And 
it is worthy of remark, that the style of our extract is unques- 
tionably good ; clear, nervous, direct, and free from any trace 
of juvenile bravura. 

The reader will begin to see that our opinion of Samuel Bud- 
gett is somewhat high. It is so. We consider him far the 
ablest man of whom we have yet treated : a character of uncom- 
mon breadth and completeness ; an embodiment of English 
sagacity, intelligence, energy, and piety, as healthful and re- 
spectable as any time could show ; and conveying, in his life- 
sermon, many and most important lessons, as the Christian 
merchant and freeman of the nineteenth century. 

After serving for three years with a salary, on the expiration 
of his seven years' apprenticeship, Samuel was taken into part- 
nership by his brother. 

He feels now that he has got a firm footing, that a spot had 
been found in the world on which he may live and work. He 
prepares himself for the future accordingly. A pleasant little 
background of romance suddenly beams out upon us. We 
find that long ago — "very early" — he had fallen in love with a 
certain Miss Smith, of Midsomer Norton. His little touch of 
originality had been manifested here too ; he ventured to ad- 
mit hope into his heart to this serious extent ; he had dared to 
permit imagination to paint, in clear hues and with a flush of 
sunlight over its front, a snug pretty little cottage on his hori- 
zon, with one waiting at its threshold who to him seemed 
heavenly fair ; and so, during all his toil in that dismal prosaic 



budgett: the christian freeman. 213 

shop from morning to night, he could see in the distance that 
angelic figure smiling him on. We rejoice that we did not ex- 
press any emotion of pity for him in his affliction ; he certainly 
deserved none. Pie had now reached that little cottage ; from 
the faint though beautifully-tinted work of a dream, it had 
changed into solid brick, a decided improvement : he married 
Miss Smith, and turned to face life with the heart of a man. 
He was now twenty-five years of age. 

Let us, for a moment, contemplate the sphere in which Sam- 
uel Budgett commences work for himself; what are his pros- 
pects, and what his difficulties. His sphere is not imposing ; 
it is a retail shop in the grocery business, in the village of 
Kingswood, four miles from Bristol. In the neighboring vil- 
lages, and in Bristol, are multitudes of shops in all respects 
similar; his brother is a respectable, industrious, plodding 
man, who has prospered hitherto according to his ambition, 
and dreams not of any change. Around all these shops, and 
around this little shop of Kingswood, lies the world; each 
shop represents a man or men, combating on this arena for 
sustenance and success. There seems but little room for ad- 
vancement, little scope for talent ; one can but buy and sell 
like one's neighbors, and live as heretofore ; at all events, the 
field is open and level to all. Mercantile wealth and honor 
are, indeed, the possible prizes ; but that a village shop should 
ever come into competition with any really great establishment, 
with those of Bristol, for instance, appears never to have oc- 
curred to any one. The little shop of Kingswood receives 
into its working power Samuel Budgett ; his prospects are such 
as one may have in a village grocery ; his opponents are just 
all the grocers, wholesale and retail, who carry on business in 
these parts, and whom, if he is to advance, he must, however 
it may pain his feelings, compel to make way. 



214 BUDGETT. THE CHRISTIAN FREEMAN. 

The new partner is found to have ways of his own, which, 
in this establishment, must be regarded as new-fangled or even 
officious. His brother casts a glance of indifference, or even 
dislike, upon his proposals and proceedings ; only after a time, 
and as the commanding talent of Samuel becomes more plain, 
does he fairly throw the reins into his brother's hands. The 
latter acts in the way natural to him. It may be briefly char- 
acterized thus : he does, with perfect accuracy and thorough- 
ness, what lies to hand, what is ordinary and established in the 
routine of business, and he has always, besides, a sure and 
piercing glance ahead and around. Now, we think this is the 
precise point of difference between the accurate, methodic man, 
who will conserve all, but make no advancement, and the man 
who will step onward ; both are thorough workers, but the one 
has no originality, no instinct of improvement, no healthful, 
intelligent audacity, while the other has. The blundering man, 
again, the man whose boldness and originality are not so fitly 
those of manhood as of youth, looks only, or principally, for- 
ward ; he devotes not sufficient time and energy to the ground 
already won, he will set off in foolish pursuit while a body of 
the enemy is yet unbroken on the field. The man who will 
make real progress never neglects the business of the moment, 
but . he looks forward too ; he ventures, on the right occasion, 
in the strength and self-reliance of talent, to break through old 
sanctioned rules and shape new ones for himself. The truly 
and healthfully original man is not he who recklessly gambles, 
appealing from custom to chance, but he who, with a light of 
his own, holding as little of chance as the prudence of the veri- 
est plodder, appeals from custom to vision. Such a light had 
Samuel Budgett ; in this sense, and to this extent, he was an 
original man. 

Now, it is not easy to exhibit this originality of Budgett's 



budgett: the christian freeman. 215 

in action. When once a thing is done, as Columbus and that 
wonderful Chinese genius who discovered that pigs could be 
roasted without burning houses knew, its performance, nay its 
invention, seem the simplest things in the world. If we trace 
Budgett's career, step by step, we find nothing in the course of 
his ascent to wealth and influence which it does not seem cer- 
tain that we should have done, had we been in the circum- 
stances. Yet it is almost ceTtain we should have done other- 
Avise ; and we have this simple way of satisfying ourselves as 
to the probability that we should — viz., by inquiring whether, 
mutatis mutandis, we are advancing in our own sphere. In 
every walk of life there are certain minutiae which are visible 
only to the man of insight, and to be seized only by the man 
of tact, but which are yet the tender, scarce perceptible fila- 
ments leading to fortune's mines. If you know not how to see 
and seize these in your own department, depend upon it, gentle 
reader, had you been put down, instead of Samuel Budgett, in 
this shop at Kingswood, you had sold groceries over the coun- 
ter all the days of your life. 

Mr. Arthur sketches, with much animation and graphic 
power, the progress of Budgett, as he pushed on, step by step, 
and won position after position ; but we are unable to follow 
him. The reader must picture to himself a man of untiring 
activity who is yet never flurried, of keen and constant sagacity, 
of tact in dealing with men, of real and abounding affection to 
his fellows, so that the interest he manifests in their affairs has 
in it no element of deceit or affectation. He must mark him 
ever in the van of circumstance, discerning opportunity from 
afar, and seizing it with eagle swoop. He must see him grad- 
ually diffusing a spirit akin to his own on all who come within 
the sphere of his influence ; incapacity, indolence, and dishon- 
esty, shrinking from his look. He must note specially the 



216 budgett: the christian freeman. 

skill with which he combines conservation with advance. The 
customer who is secured is always first to be attended to ; all 
thought of extending the trade is to be postponed to his con- 
venience ; the shops which deal with Budgett are seen to be 
the most prosperous, and no customer is ever lost. To look at 
the perfect internal working of the business, one fails to find 
any suggestion of progress ; to mark how it is expanding, one 
is apt to think extension the one endeavor. Budgett has al- 
ways his foot on the firm ground, but the light in his eye comes 
from yon bright gleam still in the distance. 

One example of his mode of working is as good as a thou- 
sand, and only one can we find space to give. 

The business has now branched out in all directions. There 
are " several establishments" in Bristol ; the retail shop is the 
center of great warehouses and counting-houses ; at Kingswood 
there are kept forty-seven draught horses. One night the citi- 
zens of Bristol are startled by the reddening of the whole hori- 
zon in the direction of Kingswood Hill ; the warehouses of the 
Messrs. Budgett are in flames. The men of Bristol stand 
gazing as the huge blaze illumines the sky ; from all neighbor- 
ing quarters there is a flocking of spectators, and racing of en- 
gines. Efforts are vain ; the horses, indeed the stables, and 
the books, are preserved ; but warehouses, counting houses, 
and the retail shop, are burned to the ground. Samuel Bud- 
gett has not, of course, forgotten to insure, yet the pecuniary 
loss is above three thousand pounds. Here surely is enough 
to confuse one ; without warning, and in a night, the fury of 
fire consumes your accumulated substance, and puts its volcanic 
interruption on your arrangements ; your workmen are flung 
out of their posts, your methods of work are broken up, your 
whole business-machine is torn limb from limb, and lies scat- 
tered in fragments. Now is the hour to prove whether you 



budctEtt: the christian freeman. 21 7 

are a man of self-command and originality ; whether your 
mind is of that iron order which the sound of battle only 
clears and animates ; whether, when custom, on which, as on 
a quiet horse, you have hitherto ridden composedly along, sud- 
denly pitches you from his neck and leaves you sprawling, you 
have courage and power to rise to your feet, and lay your 
hand on a new steed, and vault on his back, and break him in 
for yourself. Budgett sees into the whole matter, and com- 
prehends how it is to be managed, precisely as if he had done 
nothing, his life long, but set things in train after sudden fires. 

The next morning, every customer expecting goods on that 
day from the Budgetts receives a circular. It states briefly 
that there has been a fire on the premises, and that one day is 
necessary to repair the consequent disarrangement. Just one 
day ; in such length of time, Samuel calculates, the wrath of the 
fire will have been baulked. And one day is sufficient. He goes 
swiftly, but with no hurry, into Bristol, hires a new house, sets 
all hands to work, and the next day sees all customers served. 
Bristol henceforward becomes head-quarters, and Samuel Bud- 
gett, who is now the sole head of the business, more powerful 
than ever. 

This is the true English working talent ; the same quiet, 
speedy energy you see in Churchill, in Monk, and, in grander 
combination, in Cromwell ; in whatever form it is embodied, 
there is no standing it ; men, nations, nature itself, give way 
before it. We think we may now allege that Budgett was a 
man of strong and ready energy, of calm, indomitable spirit, 
and of extraordinary resource ; but this will become still more 
evident when we contemplate, at one deliberate glance, his final 
attainment. 

It was but an unpromising sphere in which we saw him finally 
set to work ; a village shop, with a line of donkeys at its door. 

10 



218 budgett: the CHuisTiix freeman. 

There he took his post to measure himself with his opponents, 
to bring his force into the general system of social dynamics. 
Years have gone by, and the never-failing might of intellectual 
power has vindicated itself. The force of Budgett's mind has 
affected the whole region. His warehouses tower proudly, 
like those of merchant princes ; over all the south-western 
counties of England his connection extends ; over the sea, 
from distant lauds, come vessels with cargoes for him. It is 
probable that a greater effect was not possible in his depart- 
ment. He was not in the arena of the Eothschilds and Bar- 
ings, and we can not say how he would have prospered if 
matched against the great rulers of the Stock Exchange. But 
in the field where he did contend, he distanced all competition ; 
without capital, without prestige, in a village in the vicinity 
of a large town, he built up a business which cast every rival 
into the shade. And those warehouses have been built, this 
magnificent business has been established, with no fortuitous 
aid from happy conjunctures of circumstance, or timeous open- 
ings of the field ; it has been by seeing the hitherto invisible, 
by descrying every trace of occasion, by the constant, imper- 
ceptible application of a clear and tireless intellect, that his 
triumphs have been won. And now he is a man of wealth and 
importance ; he has satisfied his youthful ambition. The day 
was when he sold cheese by the pound across the counter ; he 
now receives goods " by the cargo," and sells them " by the 
ton ;" the day was when it was a serious question whether 
goods might be conveyed to Doynton and Pucklechurch, a 
momentous and amazing undertaking to journey once a month 
to Frome ; he has now a regular staff of efficient travelers, 
spreading the connection north, south, east, into the very heart 
of England. "I remember," said an old man, who felt like 
Caleb Balderstone on the subject — "I remember when there 



budgett: the christian freeman. 219 

were five men and three horses, and I have lived to see three 
hundred men and one hundred horses." 

We thinlc it here in place, although what we have to say- 
must be considered with the commentary of all we have yet to 
relate of Budgett, to look calmly in the face certain objections 
which have been urged against him on the score of sharp trad- 
ing. He rose, it has been whispered, by elbowing aside his 
fellows, by grasping, with unbecoming haste and eagerness, 
what, in natural order, would have fallen to other men ; if just, 
he was not generous ; he gave no indulgence, and made no 
allowance ; he pressed every advantage, and used every op- 
portunity ; he seemed always at a running pace, while sober 
men walked. We deem it the one really important defect in 
Mr. Arthur's spirited and valuable work on Budgett, that he 
takes the commonplace, and, as we think, erroneous view of 
his character here. As his testimony may be considered some- 
what partial to Budgett, and as it is well to have an error 
which you wish to combat stated in its most plausible form, we 
quote a paragraph from his pages. He has just intimated 
that the subject of his narrative was " quick to descry an ad- 
vantage, and resolute to press it;" he proceeds thus : — "This 

. . . formed the chief deduction from the benevolence 
of his character. In business he was keen — deliberately, con- 
sistently, methodically keen. He would buy as scarcely any 
other man could buy ; he would sell as scarcely any other man 
could sell. He was an athlete on the arena of trade, and re- 
joiced to bear off the prize. He was a soldier on the battle- 
field of bargains, and conquered he would not be. His power 
over the minds of others was immense, his insight into their 
character piercing, his address in managing his own case mas- 
terly, and, above all, his purpose so inflexible, that no regard 
to delicacy or to appearances would for a moment beguile him 



220 budgett: the christian freeman. 

from his object. He would accomplish a first-rate transaction, 
be the difficulty what it might. That secured, his word was 
as gold, and generosity was welcome to make any demands on 
his gains. But in the act of dealing, he would be the aptest 
tradesman in the trade. To those who only met him in the 
market, this feature of his character gave an unfavorable im- 
pression. They frequently felt themselves pressed and con- 
quered, and naturally felt sore. To those who knew all the 
excellence and liberality which lay beneath his hard mercan- 
tile exterior, it appeared the peculiarity and the defect of an 
uncommonly worthy man — yet still a defect and a peculiarity." 
If Mr. Arthur is wrong here, it is an important error. 
Whatever you may consider, in forming your judgment of a 
merchant, his manner of carrying on business is the first and 
the essential element in your estimate. If a man is found 
wanting here, all you can say of his other good qualities be- 
comes mere extenuation. If there was any thing in Budgett's 
mercantile dealing to be defined " a deduction from his benevo- 
lence," it will go hard to prove him really benevolent at all. 
His radical character is that of English merchant ; this, so to 
speak, is the backbone of the whole existence of Budgett ; if 
you detect a twist here, or if the spinal marrow is diseased, 
you will hardly prove your man handsome or sound. Every 
mouth must be stopped that breathes the slightest insinuation 
here ; from his mercantile honor every imputation must be 
brushed aside ; and, by mercantile honor, we mean all that 
thorough gentlemen can rightfully and honorably expect from 
each other when engaged in trade. For our own part, we 
think that Budgett's native and powerful talent is attested in 
perfect accordance with the requirements we have just stated ; 
while it is precisely here that he embodies one of those les- 
sons which nature repeats from age to age, and which is, per- 



BUDGE TT: the CHRISTIAN FREEMAN. 221 

haps, peculiarly deserving of study and of enforcement in our 
day. 

We must ask, first, What is the general law on this point : 
how does nature arrange in the matter 1 

In all professions and trades, certain contending forces are 
brought into play. No man denies that the faculties of re- 
spective men, their sagacity, their energy, their perseverance, 
are different. Every profession is, in one important and in- 
variable aspect, a form of exertion of human faculty, an arena 
of power ; and it is all but implied in this, that in every pro- 
fession there will be degrees of success and failure. From 
this last circumstance it will be an inevitable result, that cer- 
tain persons find themselves surpassed, beaten, thwarted, and 
that they feel pain in consequence. It is one of the sad con- 
sequences of the fall, irremediable save by a reversal of that 
fall, but, like other such painful phenomena, itself of remedial 
tendency in the body politic, that every man who rises in any 
profession must tread a path more or less bedewed by the 
tears of those he passes on his ascent. The incompetent or 
indolent soldier takes commands from his able and active 
comrade who has left the ranks ; the able and indefatigable 
physician absorbs the practice of the dullard or the empiric ; 
the lawyer, whose logic is as a Damascus saber, and who 
wields it like an Arab arm, condemns his heavy-eyed or care- 
less brother to starve. There may be no envy and no hate ; 
there may be no feeling of indignation, and no affixing of 
blame ; but there will be, at least, the pain of privation, of 
failure. More peculiarly does this apply to mercantile pro- 
fessions. Here the precise mode in which talent is brought 
to bear, is in making money : if you are so much abler than 
your neighbor, you win so much the more money than he ; 
and, as your relative winnings are drawn from a common 



222 budgett: the christian freeman. 

store, namely, the purse of the public, the more you have, the 
less he gets. Deper.d upon it, he will in these circumstances 
feel " sore." It is the producing of this soreness which has 
been objected to Budgett ; we deem it a necessary and salu- 
tary pain, and consider it just and honorable in him to have 
inflicted it. 

What, we inquire further, are the components of that force 
which a man brings rightfully into the arena of his profession, 
what means is it perfectly honorable in him to use for his own 
advancement ? We answer simply, its components are two- 
fold — it consists of capital and of faculty ; we contend it is 
his right and duty to use each to the utmost. In some pro- 
fessions, intellectual power constitutes the whole force ; but it 
is not so in commercial affairs. It is honorable, as will not be 
questioned, to lay out at fair interest the money or other capi- 
tal which is yours. It is precisely as honorable, we contend, 
to use to its last item of value the faculty which nature has 
committed to your charge. If you see the gleam of a gold 
vein where I saw only clay, the reward is justly yours ; if you 
know the ground where corn will grow better than I, your 
sheaves must be more numerous than mine ; if you have 
stronger sinew and more perseverance, and choose to toil for 
hours in the westering sun after I have unyoked my team, you 
must lay a wider field under seed than I. And no upright or 
manly feeling in me will permit me to accuse you when you 
thus work your faculties to the utmost ; the pearls are for him 
that can dive, the golden apples for him that can climb ; I am 
no brave man if I bid you bate your energies out of pity or 
misnamed courtesy, and if you listen to such request, you in- 
cur the responsibility of showing, at the last, a return on your 
talents not so great as He will know to be possible, who gave 
you them to occupy till His coming. Nature, and we use the 



BUDGET t: the CHRISTIAN FREEMAN. 223 

word tft designate reverently the method of His working who 
is nature s power, intends every faculty to be used to the ut- 
most. A man who expects less from his competitors than an 
unsparing use of all their means, is a coward ; a man who aims 
at having more than the full use of his own, is a churl. 

There are two positive and conclusive proofs that this is na- 
ture's intention, which we shall presently adduce. But, first, 
we would ask, does not this view of the case accord with the 
general feeling and sense of men 1 Is it not a bitter insult to 
a man who is on an equal footing with yourself, to temper 
your powers till they can act without in any way annoying 
him, to disguise your faculties that he may not feel his weak- 
ness 1 Is it not recognized, that if one man sees where he can 
make a bargain honorably and openly where another man is 
blind, and, instead of availing, himself of the opportunity, ap- 
prises his neighbor of its whereabouts, he does virtually give 
the latter a dole 1 Assuredly, there is a distinction drawn 
between that profit which results from the dealing of one man 
with another of a purely mercantile nature, and for which no 
thanks are looked for, however great it may be, and the profit 
for which one has to thank another, which is a favor and gift 
in all essential points, however slight. 

Leaving this, however, we offer these two considerations as 
demonstrating the fact that nature means and commands men, 
without asking any questions, and in every department of af- 
fairs, to use their talents to the utmost. 

The first is, That this is nature's method of spurring on the 
indolent, and having her work rightly done. Every true man 
is a whip in nature's hand to scourge on the laggard ; if he 
works rightly, he must be so. And if there is whipping, there 
must be feeling. What is it which keeps the human race in 
progress at all 1 what is it v hich prevents our sitting down by 



224 budgett: the christian freeman. 

the. wayside and falluig into a half-sleep, and, finding what will 
merely suffice for an animal existence, moving onward no 
more 1 Is it not just that, at intervals, in the several corps of 
the army, a strong and determined spirit starts up, who will 
strike forward with new speed, and, despite the remonstrance 
of the slothful, animate the whole battalion to new life and 
energy 1 Nature makes you pay for every hour of sleep or 
pleasure beyond the number she approves ; and he whom she 
appoints to receive for her the payment, is the man who has 
worked while you have slept or danced. 

But, secondly, it is found that nature is here kind also ; that, 
however individuals may smart and grumble, this method sub- 
serves most effectually the interests of the majority. Her aim 
is thoroughness of work and amount of produce ; when these 
are attained, the interests of the common weal are best con- 
sulted. And, to reach this, it is necessary that all the faculty 
of the community be at work, and to its utmost strain. One 
man can not possibly restrain the honorable action of his pow- 
ers for the sake of the feelings of another, without the loss of 
a certain amount of that force by which nature carries on her 
operations, and provides for her children : kindness must blunt 
no sword or scythe, or it will cause ten to weep instead of 
one. 

The idea of charity, we conclude, is alien to the idea of 
trade ; all that can be demanded, under the name of mercan- 
tile honor, is simple justice. 

We are happy to be able to illustrate these remarks, espe- 
cially the second of our proofs, that nature intends no respect 
to be shown to individual feeling in mercantile competition, by 
a glance at the general effect of the success of Samuel Budgett 
in the south-west of England. That effect was a general in- 
crease in the animation and vigor of his order of commercial 



budgett: the christian freeman. 225 

operations over th^ district. The customers caught the spirit 
of those who had so ably secured their custom ; the firms still 
able to contend bestirred themselves ; there was new activity 
every where. In one word, nature's work was better done in 
those quarters than formerly. Mr. Arthur appears to be 
all unconscious of that very important aspect of the opera- 
tions of the commercial class in every country which we have 
indicated. He recognizes the duties of each man to provide 
for himself; he recognizes the duty of every man to " adapt 
his services to the general good ;" but he does not perceive 
that in the thorough performance of this last task, the man 
may find it impossible to avoid giving pain to certain of his 
own class. The confusion into which he falls arises from his 
failing to distinguish the " general interest" of the public, as 
contrasted with the individual interest of members of the class 
of merchants. He starts with a condemnation of Budgett for 
inflicting "soreness" on those with whom he dealt; but he 
never says, and his whole book is an affirmation of the oppo- 
site, that he did not work as effectually /or the 'public good as 
was possible. It was his brother merchants alone who suffered ; 
it was in the maket he was harsh ; it was the extreme thorough- 
ness of his performance of that task which Mr. Arthur accu- 
rately defines as the merchant's in the social system, the task 
of " directly conveying the creatures of God into the hands" 
of those for whom they are intended, which made him at times 
obnoxious to those who performed the same task, from what- 
ever cause, not quite so thoroughly. 

We recognize, in fact, here, the radical strength and stamina 
of Budgett's character : we point to the circumstances urged 
in objection, as conclusive proof that his mind was hale and of 
strong fiber ; that vital Christianity had introduced no softness 
oi incapacity for working to the utmost of his powers into liis 
10* 



2 ^^6 B U D G E T T : THE CHRISTIAN F E. E E M A N . 

nature. Mr. Arthur informs us his aim was unimpeachable 
honor and his word gold. We know, too, that money was not 
his object ; that wealth was a matter for which he cared very 
little. The proof of this important point is perfect. He did 
not cling, with miserly tenacity, to business to the last ; he 
took matters quietly, and sti'ove after no further extension ^\ hen 
life was still strong in him. After he had ceased to attend 
with his old impelling vigor to the affairs of the firm, he heard 
some one say he wished for more money. " Do you *?" he ex- 
claimed ; " then I do not ; I have quite enough. But if I did 
wish for more, I should get it." On his death-bed, when his 
voice was tremulous with the last weakness, he deliberately 
said, " Riches I have had as much as my heart could desire, but 
I never felt any pleasure in them for their own sake, only so 
far as they enabled me to give pleasure to others,' etc. ; and 
we know him to have been a man, out of the market, of a 
generosity which might be deemed extravagant. His brother 
merchants did, unquestionably, at times feel themselves disa- 
greeabh^ overborne, did experience an uneasy sensation, and 
call him keen and harsh ; it is always unpleasant to pay trib- 
ute, and these men were commanded by nature to pay tribute 
to Budgett as their king. And why did he, who had no par- 
ticular desire for money, and an acute feeling of any pain he 
gave, thus permit himself, we can not doubt consciously, to pain 
his brother merchants 1 It was the strong instinct of the born 
merchant in his heart, the strong instinct of the true man. He 
could not dishonor his competitors by supposing them incapa- 
ble of the stern joy of warriors in worthy foemen ; he could 
not rein his steeds that stumbling or laggard hacks might reach 
the goal before him; he could not, without intense suffering, 
curb the faculties nature had given him, or turn them from 
their work. They felt sore, to be sure. Did the sectioners 



budgett: the christian freeman. 227 

feel sore when they arrived at the carap of Sablons, " some min- 
utes" too late, and found that Napoleon had clutched the guns 1 
But was it not right that the quick mind and ready hand should 
have them ? In the market, Budgett knew instinctively that 
integrity ruled, that charity and favor were alien to the place ; 
had he won counters instead of guineas, he would have acted 
just in the same w^ay. We can imagine him even having had 
compunctious touches, but a sterner and healthier feeling over- 
ruled pity, and held it firmly in its place. 

"I'd give the lands of Deloraine 
Brave Musgrave were alive again;" 

so said generous William, although he had just explained that, 
were Musgrave actually alive again, it would be necessary for 
him, by the rules of Border honor, at once to rekill him. 

Our whole argument, in defense of Budgett, falls to the 
ground, if it can be proved that, in his habitual dealing, there 
was the slightest infraction of equity, the slightest departure 
from the rules of the game ; but, when we perceive that all 
the pain occasioned to his rivals in the market can be accounted 
for in the simple, rational, and probable way we have seen, 
since we are absolutely certain he had no particular love of 
money, and since we find his hand to the full as ready to give 
as to gain, we confidently declare his sharp, or, as we should 
prefer saying, his thorough dealing in business to have been no 
deduction from his benevolence, but to have been a testimony 
of remarkable point and conclusiveness to the general force 
and ability of his character. To any man that needed a help- 
ing hand, we can not doubt he would have extended one, but 
if you met him on the field, you were foot to foot and eye to 
eye opposed, and mercy could only come in tho form of con- 



228 budgett: the christian freeman. 

tempt. Saladin sent Coeur de Lion a h^rse that he might fight 
like a knight, but did he bate his saber when he met him on 
the battle-plain? 

We have thus, then, got, so to speak, the framework of our 
man ; we find that it is the unflawed iron of integrity, clear in- 
sight, and energy ; he is a man who can thoroughly work. 

But we say that, in his boyhood, there was not only a stern 
but a gentle aspect of his character ; we may find now that 
this iron framework of his manhood is wreathed with pleasant 
verdure and dewy flowers. We have seen him when he had 
simply to measure his strength ; we must survey him now as 
a master, as a member of society philanthropically desirous of 
removing its evils, and as a father. 

Entering the central establishment where, as we have seen, 
hundreds of men are employed, we find that the whole works 
with faultless regularity. The genius of English industry 
seems to have chosen the place as a temple. There is no fuss, 
little noise ; there is no haste — no time for that. The face of 
every workman shows that he may not linger ; its firm lines, 
at the same time declare that he has no wish to do so. Hearty 
activity, healthful contented diligence are seen on every hand. 
The immense daily business is timeously transacted, and the 
hours of evening see the place shut and silent. 

Samuel Budgett is the mainspring of the vvhole vast machine. 
Under the middle size, with strong brows, open forehead, and 
lower features firm and clearly cut, he may at once be dis- 
cerned to be a man who can dare and do : his " quick brown 
eye" glances every where, and overlooks nothing ; its light makes 
the wheels go faster. He speaks a word of encouragement to 
the active, he sends an electric look to the indolent; it is 
plain his authority is unquestionable, and that he retains and 
uses it without an effort. Bunglin*^ of no sort, be it from 



budgett: the christian freeman. 229 

want of power or want of will, can live in his glance ; he can 
detect falsehood lurking in the depths of an eye, and vailing 
itself in the blandest smile ; he has a tact and ready invention 
which find a quiet road to every secret ; only perfect thorough- 
ness of work and perfect honesty of heart can stand before him. 
Yet the kindly and approving is evidently his most natural and 
cherished look ; he speaks many a word of sympathy and 
kindness ; the respect and perfect deference which wait on his 
steps are tempered by affection. 

We find that, as a master, he is, first of all, thorough. His 
men have a profound knowledge that he is not to be trifled 
with. The incompetent, the indolent, are discharged. A man 
must perform what he has taken in hand, or he must go. 
" Why, sir," said one who had been long in his service, " I do 
believe as he would get, ay, just twice as much work out o' a 
man in a week as another master." This power of infusing a true 
working spirit into men explains his whole success. Conceive 
every man he employed working thoroughly, no workman 
dawdling, no traveler loitering, every customer finding him- 
self punctually and perfectly attended to ; every thing becomes 
then conceivable. He has the gift of knowing men ; for him 
who would prosper in any sort of practical endeavor, it is the 
indispensable gift. Upon this thoroughness and penetration it 
was of course again an attendant, that pain was felt in certain 
quarters ; rotten branches, ineffective workmen, could not be 
cut away without crashing, and crackling : here, too, we meet 
that fine confirmatory evidence of his real power and energy 
that he awakened complaints on the part of those in whom 
these were lacking. 

We learn, next, that he has a warm, and honest sympathy 
with his men. It is not the result of their work in the shape 
of his own profit which gratifies him, so much as the satisfac- 



230 budgett: the Christ ia.n freeman. 

tion and advantage of all who work along with him. We find 
no niggardliness, no appearance of strain, in his efforts to attain 
wealth. If he gets more work out of men than other masters, 
his employed get more from him in the best forms than other 
men. At the time of his entering partnership, the working 
hom's are from six in the morning to nine at night. This goes 
against the new partner's grain. " I do not like to see you here," 
he would say to the employed ; " I want to see you at home : 
we must get done sooner." Dismissal at half-past eight is at- 
tempted, and the men are greatly relieved. But this is only a 
commencement. If there are too few men, more can be added ; 
if there is trifling, men must go altogether. As the business 
enlarges, the time shortens, and Samuel does not rest until he 
sees his men all trooping off cheerily to their families at five or 
half-past five in the evening. Keep these two parallel attain- 
ments in view, when you estimate the generosity and mercantile 
honor of Budgett.' There is, in the establishment, a regular 
system of fines ; but the head or heads pay most, and the 
whole goes to a sick fund. There is an annual festival given 
to the men ; good cheer, athletic games, and a certain amount, 
we trust moderate, of speech-making, speed the hours ; the 
Rev. Mr. Carvasso, hearing our merchant speak on one such 
occasion, thinks his address of " an extraordinary character," 
wishes it had been printed, and adds, " Except on that occasion, 
I never heard him come out in a set public address, but the 
talent then displayed convinced me of the grasp of his mind, 
and how greatly some had mistaken him." There is a system- 
atic distiibution of small rewards from week to week ; Bud- 
gett stands at a certain outlet to the premises with a pocketful 
of little packages containing money, and slips one into each 
man's hand as he passes out ; " One would find he had a pres- 
ent of five shillings, another of three, another of half-a-crown ;" 



budgett: the christian freeman. 23 i 

the gift is graduated by respective merit. " Ah, sir," exclaims 
an old informant, " he was a man as had no pleasure in muck- 
in' up money ; why, sir, he would often in that way give, ay, 
I believe, twenty pounds on a Friday night — well, at any rate 
fifteen pounds." Besides this, certain of the employed are 
made directly to feel their interests in the success of the busi- 
ness. " When a year wound up well, the pleasure was not all 
with the principals ; several of those whose diligence and 
talent had a share in gaining the result, found that they had also 
a share in the reward." " One," Mr. Arthur goes on to say, 
" after describing the pains Mr. Budgett had taken to make 
him master of his own branch of the business, and how, when 
satisfied with his fitness, he had devolved upon him important 
responsibilities, said, with a fine feeling which I should love to 
see masters generally kindle among those in their employment, 
* And he never had a good year, but I was the better for it 
wheii stock-taking came.' " 

But, last and most important of all, Budgett, in his capacity 
as master, is a religious man — a real, earnest Christian. We 
have not now to ask whether his energy is unimpeded and un- 
relaxed, whether his powers have their full swing ; but it is 
important to learn of what sort his religion is, and to what 
extent it pervades his life, that we may know whether it is of 
a nature to be pronounced effete — whether it is, on the one 
hand, a deistic fashionable assent to Christianity, or, on the 
other, a cramped fanaticism or bigotry, not blending in kindly 
union with the general modes of his existence. We know 
that in his case Christianity has never been intellectually 
doubted, and he may therefore be taken as a good example 
of a thorough English merchant, who still, in the nineteenth 
century, draws the vital strength of his character from that 
Christian religion in which he has been born, and which he 



?.^2 BUDGE tt: the christian freeman. 

has unconsci )usly drunk in. We discover that his religion is 
of that perse nal penetrating order which has in all times char- 
acterized men who, even among Christians, have been recog- 
nized as such in a peculiar sense ; of that sort which made 
Bunyan weep in anguish, and at which the merely respectable 
person in all ages laughs ; of that sort against which Sydney 
Smith aimed his melancholy raillery, in unaffected wonderment 
at its refusing to him the name of Christian minister or Chris- 
tian man. 

This determined merchant, whom we have seen pushing on 
to fortune through the press of vainly opposing rivals, humbles 
himself daily before God, searches his soul for secret sins, finds 
cause for keenest sorrow in the turning of God's countenance 
away from him. This Budgett can weep like a child, or like 
Bunyan, or an old Ironside, for his shortcomings. Christianity 
is to him as fresh as it was to Peter when Christ commanded 
him to feed His lambs; its salvation is to him as clear a 
reality as to Stephen when he saw heaven opened. And it 
does blend in the kindliest union with his whole character and 
actions ; he feels that a Christian must be one all in all ; he 
lives as if in the continual sense of having been made by Christ 
one of God's priests upon earth. His natural tact and power 
of winding himself into close conversation, so as to get at 
men's inmost hearts, are brought into the service of the Gos- 
pel. In an unostentatious, quiet way, he manages to urge its 
claims on his men, by casual words, by little snatches of con- 
versation, in any moment when he has them alone. Every 
man in this establishment is perpetually reminded that he is 
considered by his master an immortal being, and feels that all 
temporary differences between them are merged in the sub- 
lime unities in which Christianity embraces all human rela- 
tions. Once a man came begging employment of him ; the 



bud>ett: the christian freeman. 233 

wife of the former thus related the result : — " I shall never for- 
get my husband's feelings when he came in after having seen 
Mr. Budgett for the first time. He wept like a child ; indeed, 
we both wept, for it was so long since any body had been kind 
to us. Mr. Budgett had been speaking to him like a father ; 
but what affected him most was this — when he had signed the 
agreement, Mr. Budgett took him from the counting-house into 
a small parlor in his own house, and offered up a prayer for 
him and his family." The young men resident on the premises 
have separate rooms, for the express end that they may be 
able to seek God in private. There is daily prayer on the 
premises : every day, in the morning, the whole concrn is, as 
it were, brought directly under the eye of God — Hi,, 'authority 
over it recognized, and His blessing invoked, i^nd every 
year at stock-taking, ere Samuel had become sole head, it was 
observed that the two brothers, when it was ascertained what 
precise progress had been made, retired into a private room, 
and there joined together in prayer. It is a Christi^.n mercan- 
tile establishment. 

And what is the result, on the whole ? Tliere Is the pro- 
gress we have seen — a progress which we can now to some 
extent understand ; his neighbor tradesmen are heard to 
" speak as if he rose by magic," and to insinuate that " there 
is some deep mystery in his affairs :" we have some idea of 
his enchantments. But the progress is not all. There is an- 
other circumstance, of which we have already let fall certain 
hints, but which is deserving of special attention. It is the 
fact that there is diffused, through the whole body of the em- 
ployed, a loyal zeal for the success of the businesa — that they 
are united by sympathy in a common aim — that they feel as 
true mariners for the honor of their ship, as true soldiers for 
the fame of their regiment. His men, we hear, are " person- 



234 btdgett: the christian freeman. 

ally attached" to Budgett ; they like to work with him and for 
him ; they are proud of what has been done, and proud of 
having contributed to its achievement. This is a notable 
fact. With it, as the crown of the whole, we complete our 
survey of Budgett in the capacity of master. 

But we can not at once quit the subject : we think we find 
here certain lessons clearly legible, and of vital concernment, 
touching what may be called the practical philosophy of social 
life in this our age. 

It being sufficiently evident that feudal tenures and powers 
have in our age ceased to exist, and the first general glance at 
our social arrangements seeming to reveal " cash-payment" to 
be the " sole nexus," the universal connecting medium between 
the classes of society which employ and those which are em- 
ployed, Mr. Carlyle and others have pronounced on the case 
in contempt, wrath, and lamentation. In a pamphlet recently 
published by Mr. Carlyle, we find the objectionable aspect of 
the case finely embodied in a high personage who complains to 
the writer. Being very philanthropic, and anxious, if con- 
science and common sense permit, to condole with our dis- 
tressed fellow-creatures, we must accord a hearing to his com- 
plaints. " Drops of compassion tremble on our eyelids," etc. : — 

" The Duke of Trumps," says Mr. Carlyle, " who sometimes 
does me the honor of a little conversation, owned that the state 
of his domestic service was by no means satisfactory to the hu- 
man mind. ' Five-and-forty of them,' said his Grace, 'really, 
I suppose, the cleverest in the market, for there is no limit to 
the wages. I often think how many quiet families, all down 
to the basis of society, I have disturbed, in attracting gradu- 
ally, by higher and higher offers, that set of fellows to me ; 
and what the use of them is when here ! I feed them like 
aldermen, pay them as if they Avere sages and heroes. Sam- 



budgett: the christian freeman. 235 

uel Johnson's wages, at the very last and best, as I have heard 
you say, were £300 or £500 a-year ; and Jelly snob, my but- 
ler, who indeed is clever, gets, I believe, more than the highest 
of these sums. And, shall I own it to you ? In my young 
days, with one -n alet, I had more trouble saved me, more help 
afforded me to live, actually more of my will accomplished, 
than from these forty-five I now get, or ever shall. It is all 
a serious comedy — what you call a melancholy sham. Most 
civil, obsequious, and indeed expert fellows these ; but bid 
one of them step out of his regulated sphere on your behalf ! 
An iron law presses on us all here — on them and on me. In 
my own house, how much of my will can I have done, dare I 
propose to have done ? Prudence, on my part, is prescribed 
by a jealous and ridiculous point-of-honor attitude on theirs. 
They lie here more like a troop of foreign soldiers that had 
invaded me, than a body of servants I had hired. At free 
quarters ; we have strict laws of war established between us ; 
they make their salutes, and do certain bits of specified work, 
with many becks and scrapings ; but as to service, properly so 

called ! I lead the life of a servant, sir ; it is I that am 

a slave ; and oflen I think of packing the whole brotherhood 
of them out of doors one good day, and retiring to furnished 
lodgings, but have never done it yet !' Such was the confes- 
sion of his Grace." 

"For," adds Mr. Carlyle, " indeed, in the long run, it is not 
possible to buy obedience with money." 

Your complaint, we must confess, addressing his Grace, is 
indeed pitiful. Your domestics look upon you manifestly as a 
mere dispenser of good things ; they know you have money, 
and that by a little juggling they can get it out of your hands ; 
they laugh at you in their sleeves ; you are among them as 
the returning lord in Don Juan among the groups that feasted 



236 BUDGE tt: the christian freeman. 

at his expense; in one word, they make a fool of you. Now 
this is never done, your Grace, unless nature gives material 
assistance. You perceive that the sailors of a seventy-four do 
not make a fool of their captain ; Budgett's men, we find, made 
no fool of him ; and do you think that the man to whom you 
confess would be made a fool of in that style, were he in your 
place 1 He has made something very like an assertion, that 
you are a " reed shaken in the wind ;" he thinks, we used to 
understand, that your Grace's coat and badges were " torn in 
a scuffle" somewhere about 1789 ; we think your resort for 
consolation a little strange. What does your Grace want % 
Would you have your fellow-creatures bow down to your 
coronet? They say it is of faded tinsel. Would you have 
them reverence the face of which you are the " tenth trans- 
mitter '?" They say, " O, just look at it ; it is uncommonly 
foolish." W^ould you like to have the gallows-tree on your 
lawn, and manacles in a dungeon under your hall ? Like 
enough ; but these are precisely what your Grace never shall 
get ; reach forth your hand to them, and see whether a red 
stream will not flow to wash your parchments very white ! 
Your Grace finds it too much to remember the duties for which 
you have hired your servants ; you have no tact or authority 
to rule men, no dignified self-respecting sympathy to win 
them ; you fancy it is the gold that prevents your being 
honored ; it is no such thing ; the dying Napoleon awed men 
by the power of his eye when his tongue was already silent, 
but men of your stamp were never truly obeyed since the 
world began. Not even a gallows would help you ; it is a 
hopeless case, xind we regard it as exactly as it should be ; like 
master, like man. Your affliction administers to us soft delec- 
tation ; we should deem it treacherous to our time to pity you. 
We give you sixpence ! 



budgett: the christian freeman. 237 

The case is siir,ple enough ; the phenomenon need not startle 
us. The old obedience has certainly passed away ; and true 
it is that obedience has never been, and can never be, bought 
by money. What then 1 There is a new obedience possible. 
Thanks to the French Revolution, thanks, whatever its evils, 
to advancing democracy, that it has struck, as by a universal 
electric shock, into the heart of humanity, the idea, to be ex- 
tinguished never again but to work itself more and more into 
life and development, that no parchment written by human 
hand, no gold dug from earthly mine, can give a man a title 
to obedience. That title must be written with other than hu- 
man ink, bought with other than earthly gold. It must be 
written on the brow in lines of strength and thoughtfulness, it 
must be seen on the lip, where earnest self-respect, and habitual 
self command, and resolution that can die, have displaced van- 
ity, sensuality and pride ; it must glow, with a clear and 
ethereal fullness as of heaven's sanctioning light, from the un- 
agitated eye, in the calmness of comprehending knowledge, the 
deliberate energy of justice, the disarming magic of love, the 
constraining majesty of godliness. As never before, all men 
are now flung on their individuality ; obedience is seen to be 
a thing beyond the reach of purchase, the possibility of trans- 
mission ; if you can rule men, they will obey you ; if you can 
not, there is no help. Look into that establishment of Bud- 
gett's once more. What tie subsists between him and his 
men ? The only visible tie is of gold ; he pays them certain 
moneys, and they work for him in return ; their right to stay, 
and his right to retain them, are precisely equal. Is he not, 
then, their master 1 He can show no patent of nobility unless he 
has one from "Almighty God ;" he was rocked in no ducal cradle, 
he wears no feudal coronet, beneath his mansion is no dungeon. 
Yet is he not a master 1 Shall we say that the obedience 



238 budgett: the christian freeman. 

which waits upon his steps is of degraded quality, or unworthy 
of the name, because it is expressed in the alacrity of the open 
and manly forehead, the willing sympathy, unshaded by fear 
and untainted by sycophancy, of the freeman's kindling eje 1 
Shall we say that the workman no longer renders to his natural 
and equal master a service and homage, as precious and sincere 
as those of the serf who was predestined, ere his birth, to fol- 
low his chief whithersoever his bare will ordained, because the 
honeysuckles of his cottage wrap his own inviolable castle, and 
free-born children gambol round his knee 1 That he toils is 
no disgrace ; it is appointed him by no injustice of man, but 
by the beneficent, though stern, decree of nature ; and his even- 
ing may be as glad and tranquil when the day's work is over, 
his sleep as sweet ere he goes forth to labor, his self-respect, 
his independence, his bold uncowering truthfulness, in one 
word, his whole inheritance both of duty and reward, as rich 
in the essential bounties of freedom as those of his master. 
Some men must ever ride in the car of civilization, while others 
drag it. The old reins by which men were guided have been 
wrenched from the hands of the drivers ; the drivers them- 
selves have, in some places, been rolled in the dust, and tram- 
pled in their gore ; but the fate of the French nobility is not 
necessarily to be universal ; a strong and wise man can yet 
take the seat, and with new reins — the golden chords of love, 
the viewless chains of sympathy — still guide and control men ; 
we see Budgett, a man born in poverty, do so with easy and 
natural effort. Why look back? Why not rather charge 
ourselves than our time "? Why perpetually gaze with re- 
verted visage on the coffined Past 1 That lingering red is not 
the flush of health, that tranquil and smiling slumber is not 
the repose of gathering energy ; it is the stillness and rigid 
molding of death that are on that face ; no resurrection ever 



budgett: the christian freeman. 289 

awoke a buried era : feudalism in all its aspects — its airy and 
gallant chivalries, its simple devotions, its conventual dream- 
ings — with its Du Guesclins, its good Douglases, its kingly 
Abbot Samsons, its troop of fair ladies riding with golden 
stirrups to the crusade — ^has passed away to the very spirit and 
essence, and Democracy lays its iron roads across its grave. 
Many generations will gaze on the picture of the whole resusci- 
tated life of the thirteenth century, as it has been painted in a 
boldness of outline and incomparable richness of color which 
must long defy the rounding finger and obscuring breath of 
time, by Mr. Carlyle ; yet Abbot Samson had his hand-gyves 
in his dungeon, and no tongue dared to move in his presence. 
The man who will rule men in an era of freedom must dis- 
pense with these ; and though the hero of Past and Present 
was assuredly born to be a prince and ruler, we can not but 
believe that men of his radical type are still extant and even 
common in England, and why obstinately close our eyes to 
the same power as his, when exhibited not in a mediaeval mon- 
astery, but in a mercantile establishment of a working era. 
Of old, you might have obedience of serfs, but you had not 
freedom. In the modern time, when your masters are incom- 
petent, you have a pretended though ignoble freedom on the 
part of servants, and no true obedience. Where you have 
competent masters and governed servants, both are free. Is 
it reasonable, then, and manly, to whine and whimper over 
our modern arrangements, as might a delicate-looking Pusey- 
ite curate, or to sneer at, and denounce, and turn away from 
them, as do very different men, instead of recognizing it as 
one great task and duty of our age to reconcile mastership 
with freedom, and valiantly setting about if? That Mr. 
Carlyle has written on these matters as he has done, may well 
excite surprise. We may have utterly misconceived the whole 



240 budgett: the christian freeman. 

purport and philosophy of his history of the French Revolu- 
tion, despite of what appears to us perfect clearness, and of 
what we know to have been enthusiastic and protracted study ; 
but if we have any one decided idea as to*the meaning of that 
book, or of what he says in his essay on Ebenezer Elliott, it is, 
that one great lesson he would enforce is, that the feudal no- 
bility must either vanish, or show themselves possessed o? per 
sonal powers to win the respect and affectionate obedience of 
men. Yet this duke appears to us to furnish an apposite and 
express illustration of such words. The world has seen 
strange things, but it may yet be worth its while to turn aside 
and contemplate Mr. Carlyle in the capacity of apologist for 
pithless personages still fondly called noblemen. 

The true point of view from which to discern the essential 
tj^pe and distinguishing characteristics of Budgett is the mer- 
cantile ; it is him in his true character you see, when you mark 
his intense delight as he moves among a group of active 
working-men, animating them by his presence, directing their 
movements, and thrilled with sympathy for honest exertion. 
But we must briefly glance at the other phases which his 
character displays : we must see him fairly out of the commer- 
cial atmosphere. And what aspect does he present to us ? 
He comes out from the mine where he has been toiling so 
eagerly with the gold he has so manfully won. Has he the 
greedy, inhuman look of the miser, the small frostbitten eye 
of the niggard 1 He has worked hard, and the result we see 
in money : the " beaverish" talent he certainly possesses. 
Has his soul become beaverish too % No. He has still the 
boy's heart which throbbed with joy when he flung his boyish 
earnings, the thirty pounds which probably appeared to him 
then a greater sum than any he afterward possessed, into his 
mother's lap. Over the deep mine, far up in the taintless 



budgett: the christian freeman. 241 

azure, his eye has ever caught the gleam of treasure which 
might well purge his eyes in the glare of earthly gold. To 
make money has been his duty ; he could not work to the 
measure of his abilities without that result ; but to give is his 
delight and his reward. With the same tact which stood him 
in such good stead among his workmen and customers, he 
strikes out devices of good ; with his native energy he 
carries them out. His positive expenditure in philanthropic 
objects is fully £2000 a-year. His mansion becomes a center 
of beneficent light for the whole district, in every direction the 
broken mists of ignorance and vice retiring. His heart is as 
warm, his hand as open, as if he had never known what it was 
to make a shilling ; he shows himself worthy to be a steward 
of nature, with large gifts committed for disposal to his hand ; 
he scatters bounty where his agency is unseen ; he ever makes 
charity the handmaid of industry, never of recklessness or 
sloth ; the blessed influence of generosity, tempered by justice 
and governed by strong intelligence, is felt over the district. 

And now we shall look, for a few moments, into the sanc- 
tuary of his home. We saw him take his earl}^ love to be his 
wife, in a little cottage in an English lane. As his other pro- 
jects have prospered in his hands, his cottage has gradually 
changed its appearance ; he is now in a commodious mansion, 
seated in the midst of broad pleasure-grounds, and command- 
ing a wide prospect of that region which his presence has lighted 
with new comfort and gladness. In his family circle we find 
him displaying the same traces of original character which we 
have marked in his procedure elsewhere. His children are 
admitted to an unwonted intimacy and confidence. " They 
knew his business affairs intimately, and in every perplexing 
case he would gather them round him, with their mother and 
aunt, and take their advice. His standing council was formed 

11 



242 budgett: the che.istta.n freeman. 

of the whole family, even at an age when other fathers wouli* 
think it cruel and absurd to perplex a child with weighty con- 
cerns." We do not remember to have ever met with an in- 
stance precisely corresponding to this. And its effects are all 
benign. He seems to have attained that perfection of domes- 
tic rule, where kindness is so governed by sagacity, that severity 
is banished, yet every good effect of severity won. The sym- 
pathy which he meets among his workmen, and which lends 
an aspect of noble work and noble governance to his whole 
business establishment, pervades, with a still finer and more 
tender warmth, the chambers of his home ; his children go 
hand-in-hand with him in his plans of improvement, the will- 
ing instruments in all his philanthropic devices. And he feels 
that he has their sympathy in higher things than these ; we 
hear him expressing the conviction that they are all going 
along with him on the way to heaven. This is the final touch 
of joy that can gild a Christian home, a ray of heaven's own 
glory coming to blend with, to hallow, to crown the blessings 
of earth. Be it a delusion or not, one would surely wish to 
" keep so sweet a thing alive :" if it is a fond, enthusiastic 
dream, so perfect is the smile of happiness on the dreaming 
face, that it were surely kind to let the sleeper slumber on. 
He believes that all his family will again gather round him 
on the plains of heaven : that the flowers which now shed 
fragrance through his life will continue to bloom beside im- 
mortal amaranths ; that the voices which are now the music 
of his being will mingle with the melodies of his eternal home ; 
that the light of those smiles which greet his approach to his 
threshold, and which now make summer in his heart, will 
blend with the light that fadeth never. We shall not say that 
his hopes are vain : his children are his friends, and friendship 
livQs in the spirit-land. 



budgett: the christian freeman. 243 

Thus, soft, genial, tenderly kind, do we find the hard-trad- 
ing Budgett, when we contemplate him where kindness and 
tenderness are in place ; depend upon it, were he not a right 
merchant in the market, he would not be so gentle in the 
home ; it is only the strong who can thus wrap the paternal 
rod in flowers. To see him in the market, one would say 
there was not one dew-drop of poetry to soften the ruggedness 
of his nature. Follow him in a walk on his own grounds, and 
you are apt to think him a soft sort of man, with somewhat of 
a sentimental turn. For he has still the same open sense for 
nature's beauty and music that he had when he heard that little 
bird's morning carol, and felt in his young heart that God had 
answered his prayer for his mother. There is a certain dewi- 
ness, a flowery freshness, over his character, an air of unex- 
hausted, unstrained strength. Three things, at least, nature 
has united in him, which have been deemed incompatible : 
thorough working faculty, religion of the sort which weeps for 
sins invisible to the world, and poetical sympathy. You may 
see him distancing his competitors in the market, until they 
whisper that he must work by magic ; you may see his cheek 
wet with tears as he prays to his God ; you may hear him, in 
gleeful tone, quoting verse after verse of poetry in his fields, 
while his children romp around. From his early days, too, 
the strange merchant has preached, and with extraordinary 
power ; his connection with the Wesleyan body led him to 
this. His whole character, last of all, is vailed in humility ; 
his bearing is that of a truly modest, self-knowing man, who 
can act with perfect self-reliance, yet take advice, if such may 
come, from a child. 

At thfe age of fifty -four, when it might have been hoped that 
many years of life were yet before him, Budgett gave symp- 
toms of a fatal malady. Dropsy and heart-complaint sho^^ 



244 budgett: the christian freeman. 

themselves, and his strength gradually wore away. His death- 
bed was glorious even among Christian death-beds. And 
though we would ground no weighty argument upon the closing 
scenes of Cnristian men, we can not regard death-bed experi- 
ence as of slight importance. Life is assuredly more import- 
ant than death ; on it would we fix our main attention. Yet it 
is mere vacant absurdity to deny that fear casts its shade over 
mankind here below, as they look forward beyond time ; that 
it is really the king of terrors whose realm is the grave, and 
that it has been one grand aim of all religions to discrown the 
specter. If, moreover, man is only for a moment a denizen of 
time, if he is yet to be born into eternity, and his life here is 
of importance only in its relation to his life beyond, it must 
ever be a moment of supreme interest to men, when the im- 
mortal soul is preening her wings for an infinite ascent, when 
earth is becoming still, and voices out of the distance seem to 
reach the dying ear, and a strange radiance falls across the 
bourne into the glazing eye. Budgett found his simple Chris- 
tian faith, laying hold of the sword of the Spirit, strong enough 
to palsy the arm of the terror-crowned, and strike from it its 
appalling dart ; nay, he found that simple Christian faith of 
power sufficient to steady his eye in gaze upon the specter, 
until his terrors faded away, and he became an angel standing 
at the gates of light. At first he was troubled and cast down ; 
but ere long the victory was complete. We shall simply quote 
a few of his words, leaving readers to make upon them their 
own comments ; to judge for themselves, whether they express 
a selfish joy, or that of one whose delight was in holiness and 
in God ; and to observe the childlike humility that breathes 
beneath their rapture. His death occurred in the April of 
1851, and these words were uttered by him from the time that 



budgett: the christian freeman. 245 

his illness began to manifest its fatal power : they sufficiently 
indicate the occasions of their utterance : — 

" I sent for you to tell you how happy I am ; not a wave, 
not a ripple, not a fear, not a shadow of doubt. I didn't think 
it was possible for man to enjoy so much of God upon earth. 
I'm filled with God." 

" I like to hear of the beauties of Heaven, but I do not dwell 
upon them ; no, what I rejoice in is, that Christ will be there. 
Where He is, there shall I be also. I know that He is in me, 
and I in Him. I shall see Him as He is. I delight in know- 
ing that." 

" How our Heavenly Father paves our way down to the 
tomb ! I seem so happy and comfortable, it seems as if it 
can not be for me, as if it must be for somebody else. I don't 
deserve it." 

" I have sunk into the arms of Omnipotent Love." 

" I never asked for joy, I always thought myself unworthy 
of it ; but He has given me more than I asked." 

" I am going the way of all flesh ; but, bless God, I 'm ready. 
I trust in the merits of my Redeemer. I care not when, or 
where, or how ; glory be to God !" 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE ; AND ONE OR TWO HINTS 
TOWARD ITS SOLUTION. 

That tliere is in our time some great difference from other 
ages, that some Ionian change is in progress, seems hidden 
from no thinker of the day. De Tocqueville on the one hand 
and Carlyle on the other proclaim the fact. This process of 
change was inaugurated by the greatest event of modern times, 
in itself, indeed, but a result, the first French Eevolution. The 
doctrines of the Encyclopgedia, the infidel or atheistic theories 
of Voltaire, Diderot, Naigeon, and their followers, had gradu- 
ally pervaded French and European society, eating out religion 
from the heart of nations. Kings and nobles trembled not. 
This new philosophy of materialism and sensuality seemed to 
them but a summer cloud, touched with the roseate hues of 
genius, and distilling a gentle rain, to nourish the flowers of 
sentiment and foster the growths of science ; if there did issue 
from it a few gleams of distant lightning, these would but clear 
the air from ennui, and promote a freer respiration. The an- 
cient sentence, " Fear God, and honor the king," had, it was 
agreed, held sway long enough over the minds of men ; the 
principalities and powers of the earth were perfectly satisfied, 
and sat smiling in the secure content of dotard imbecility, while 
the Encyclopaedic lightning burned out from its place among 
the beliefs and maxims of men, the former half of the regu- 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 247 

lating sentence; Let there be no God, they said, but oh, con- 
tinue to honor ^3. At last the storm came, m a burst that 
shook the globe. The world stood still to listen ; even the 
lone and discrowned Jerusalem, sitting amid her graves, be- 
came more desolate, for pilgrims forgot to turn their steps to 
the East. We know the result. We have marked the path 
of that lightning which burned the old French monarchy from 
the face of the earth, and in whose blasting gleam the brilliance 
of every crown in the world waxed pale. That wild glare 
awoke a power that had long slumbered : — ^The people. Leav- 
ing Encyclopaedism behind, and lifting its voice in other na- 
tions besides France, this great new element in social affairs — 
in its awakening, its attempt to make itself heard, its slow 
gravitation toward its own place in the system of things — has 
given its distinctive features to our epoch. 

To deny the fact, that the relations of classes and the modes 
of social action wear at present among free nations an aspect 
unknown in the feudal ages, is now impossible. It is simply 
out of the power of any man to turn the eye of his imagina- 
tion upon the mediaeval time ; to note the tranquillity of its 
general atmosphere, breathing in dim religious light through 
the still cathedral aisle, and resting round the hoary turret of 
the feudal castle ; to mark how reverently the serf looks up to 
his master, and with what undoubting devotion the worshiper 
kneels before the uplifted crucfix ; to observe the Book un- 
chained from its place at the altar, and the venerating wonder 
with which men gaze upon him who can read ; to see one large 
class sitting aloffc, glittering in its badges, in its one hand feudal 
charters, in its other a feudal sword, on its lip a really noble 
and beautiful smile of chivalrous valor and youthful strength, 
on his brow all the intelligence of the age, and another large 
class below, born :o bow down before this, to receive food from 



248 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

its hands and instruction from its lips, and ^-ield it in return 
the instinctive affection of children and the childlike obedience 
of men not born to the heritage of a will ; and then to main- 
tain that the whole order of society has not undergone a uni- 
versal and upturning alteration. So thorough, so transforming 
is the change from this era, that a single glance at the picture 
is sufficient to convince any intelligent, informed, and healthy- 
minded man that it is gone forever. The individual or party 
who proposes any attempt toward its recall is not to be list- 
ened to : we do not take up the view of the present time, gen- 
erally understood as that of Puseyism : we foreclose all plead- 
ing on that side of the question, by the simple observation, 
that we can regard neither with hope nor apprehension what 
were an absolute anomaly in this world, an unrolling of the 
scroll of history after it has been once folded up. 

But there has taken place a much later change than that we 
here indicate. It is, we think, only in what may be called late 
years that the ultimate influences of the mighty agency intro- 
duced by John Faust into civilization have begun to become 
traceable. It is only in these times that its unpredicted power 
to loosen the tongue of the world, to draw forth the electricity 
of thought, to turn the pen to a scepter, and the hereditary 
diadem to a toy, has been fairly evinced. It is the grand char- 
acteristic of our age that thought is more fluent, that men 
more easily communicate together, than heretofore ; the uni- 
versity of the modern era can be closed to none, for who is it 
that can not learn to read or write, and who that can read, and 
has the power of using his fingers, may not act upon his fel- 
lows ? We see around us the rending of ancient associations, 
the awakening of novel powers ; we witness discordance, sever- 
ance, doubt; the ancient reverences and the ancient unities 
have mostly passed away ; men believe not, without uttering a 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 249 

determined Why ? men respect not, without a mandate in na- 
ture's handwriting. To us, none of these things are amazing, 
for w^e see them to be the natural and inevitable birth of free- 
dom and knowledge : the problem they present we will accept 
and endeavor to solve. 

We venture to enunciate what we believe the precise mean- 
ing, cause, and tendency, when philosophically weighed, of all 
these great phenomena. We find these by consideration of 
1 profound apothegm of Goethe's, spoken with reference to the 
Individual mind : — " Thought widens, but lames ; action nar- 
rows, but animates." It is well known how the man of one 
idea can work ; it is well known, too, that in order to do any 
single work well, you must on it concentrate your efforts. 
We have no hesitation whatever, and since we can not here 
demonstrate the propriety of our proceeding, we must request 
readers to assure themselves by reflection and investigation 
that we are right, in applying this individual law to the nation. "- 
The army of Islam was victorious, because it poured the light- 
ning of its defiance on the foe as from one blazing eye. Na- 
tions rolled away resistlessly to the Crusade, because their 
mighty hearts throbbed with the one idea of saving the sepul- 
cher of the Saviour from the desecration of unbelievers. If 
you look well into the ancient time, you will find the unity of 
action on the part of vassals accounted for by the consideration 
that they had not a sufficient power of thought to doubt ; the 
iron energy of governments, by the fact that there had not yet 
dawned on the world the idea of toleration, and that they were 
lamed by no freedom or variety of opinion. Tliere are, how- 
ever, in the individual life, stages which are peculiarly those of p 
doubt. The youth acts cheerfully and with energy, on the 
belief he has received from his fathers : then he begins to ques- 
tion, to hesitate, to doubt : his arm is at once paralyzed, and 
11* 



\ 



250 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

■with mjkiy words his actions become few and undecisive. 
But he may advance to yet a higher state : this doubt and 
temporary indecision may be a stage in his progress to calm 
intelligent manhood ; he may regain his early cheerful and 
united energy, with his beliefs his own, and the still sky of 
manhood over him. With Britain, as a nation, we can not 
but think that it at present is as with the doubting, examining, 
questioning man. With, the old relations of force, we have 
lost much of the old power of action ; pretension and quack- 
ery flourish amain. Mr. Carlyle tells us that all things have 
unfixed themselves, and float distractedly in an ocean of talk. 
It is useless, and it is contrary to truth to say, that his denun- 
ciations are altogether uncalled for, that the peril he descries is 
not real. Let any onelook into the state of our law, and the slow 
success of efforts making for its amendment ; let him examine 
the condition of our trusts, enough, as on good authority appears, 
of itself to give work, long and difficult, to Reform, had it the 
hands of Briareus ; let him consider the ease with which public 
nuisance can shelter itself under so-called private right, and the 
clumsy and inefficient machinery by which any change, demand- 
ed it may be by the very health of our towns, can be effected ; 
let him reflect on the power of corporations to clog the wheels 
of general progress, and the seeming powerlessness of Britain 
to teach her o^vn children ; then, or rather when he has added 
from all hands to this partial list of our shortcomings, let him 
decide whether an infuoion of energy into the internal economy 
of our country is not urgently demanded. Nay, if this does 
not satisfy him, let him pace the Continent of Europe, and see 
despotism teaching all her children, cleaning, and beautifying, 
and ordering her streets, offering countless suggestions of 
order, cheapness, decorum, common sense, to a British observ- 
er, and then let him answer. 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 251 

"When," exclaims Mr. Carlyle, "shall we have dene with 
all this of British liberty, voluntary principle, dangers of cen- 
tralization, and the like 1 It is really getting too bad. For 
British liberty, it seems, the people can not be taught to read. 
British liberty, shuddering to interfere with the rights of capi- 
tal, takes six or eight millions of money annually to feed the 
idle laborer whom it dare not employ. For British liberty 
we live over poisonous cess-pools, gully-drains, and detestable 
abominations ; and omnipotent London can not sweep the dirt 
out of itself. British liberty produces — what ? Floods of 
Hansard debates every year, and apparently little else at pres- 
ent. If these are the results of British liberty, I, for one, 
move we should lay it on the shelf a little, and look oat for 
something other and further. We have achieved British 
liberty hundreds of years ago ; and are fast growing, on 
the strength of it, one of the most absurd populations the 
sun, among his great Museum of Absurdities, looks down upon 
at present." 

Now we desire specially to have it observed here, that we 
consider it necessary for no one, in order to comprehend and 
intelligently judge of the few observations we have to offer in 
the succeeding paragraphs, to agree fully in all the preceding 
remarks : let it not even be thought that we pronounce the 
state of Britain decadent : it will not be denied that, if more 
energy could, in perfect combination with freedom, be intro- 
duced into the practical working, external and internal, of our 
nation, and of free nations in general, it were well. We cer- 
tainly attach importance to what we have said, and we have 
not only Mr. Carlyle on our side, but all those thinkers, among 
whom are to be ranged Fichte and Richter, who designate this 
a transition era; yet we demand nothing more of the reader, 
than that he call to mind the commonplace about the in- 



252 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

efficiency of freedom as compared with despotism, and yield 
us a hearing while we offer one or two suggestions toward the 
practical solution of what we must believe to be the great 
problem before the free nations at present, The combination 
of modern freedom, thought, and enlightenment, wuth the 
strength and activity of despotism. 

Omitting the consideration of certain views of less import- 
ance, we deem it right to notice two solutions of our problem, 
proposed, either explicitly or implicitly, by classes of thinkers 
who recognize the necessity of reaching a solution. With each 
party, we have one important point of argument : from each 
we differ in matters of vital moment. 

The first solution is that which, however modified, had its 
source in the montanism of the first French Revolution, and 
has ever continued in essential particulars to agree with it ; 
that of liberal, or, more strictly, infidel radicalism. The one 
thing which we accept from the French Revolution, and from 
the party whose view we now consider, is their testimony to 
human freedom. We will recognize a sublimity in the attempt 
of the French nation to be free and self governing ; we will 
allow it was an apple of celestial hue and fragrance France 
stretched out her hand to pluck ; and if she found it but bitter 
and bloody dust, we shall not the less believe that it proved 
such, only because the hand with which she grasped it was 
that of a blaspheming demon. The sun looked down on 
strange sights in that Revolution tumult ; on sights whose sig- 
nificance can never be exhausted, and in which the eyes of na- 
tions will in all time have deep lessons to read. It looked 
down on a people that turned its gaze on the past, and saw 
generation after generation trooping dimly down the vista of 
years from the cavern of vacant Chance, which had the heart 
to cast its eye on the future, and see all men sinking from the 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 253 

verge of the world into the blank abyss of annihilation, and 
which, even in the ghastly loneliness of such a universe as this, 
standing for one cheerless moment between two vast and eter- 
nal graves, could contrive to be riotous and gay. It looked 
down on a cathedral where men were grimacing in idiot 
laughter round what they called the goddess of reason. It 
looked down on a Convention where they were " decreeing" the 
existence of the Supreme Being ; the existence of Him, t:- 
whom the whole universe is a film of breath on the morning 
air. Perhaps more wonderful still, it looked down upon a na 
tion having, with all this, the name of freedom on its lips, and 
uttering words which sounded like those of heroic patriots and 
poets, asserting the equality of man, and declaring that it 
would rule itself. But it had been most wonderful of all, if it 
had seen these words made good, if a people denying its im- 
mortality and believing the universe to have no moral Sun, 
knit by no sacred memories to the past and owning no treas- 
ure of hope in the future, its spirit stubborned by none of the 
iron of duty and its appetites calling aloud for pleasure, had 
been able to become free. This it did not behold. That na- 
tion first mocked freedom by the mummeries of children, and 
then made its name a loathing over the world by the horror 
of bloody cruelty. Federation fetes, statues of liberty, endless 
outflowing of meaningless mellifluous oratory, and then foam- 
ing hatred, and the long line of death tumbrils ; the dream 
that freedom was no-government, and the awakening to find 
that it was the government of madness ; — such was the history 
of the French Revolution. If we accept even from it the im- 
perishable truth that freedom is the inalienable inheritance and ^ 
ultimate goal of man, we will also read in it this other lesson, 
that without religion a nation can never be free, but will either 
go mumming and fooling to plant liberty -trees and inaugurate 



254 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

plaster-of-Paris images, or will awaken the Furies of anarchy, 
and join with them in a dance of death. Never did revolu- 
tion so completely fail as that of France ; and never in this 
world was there a revolution so profoundly infidel. Its source 
was the infidelity of Voltaire ; the philosophers who supported 
it were, as a body, infidel ; and its poet Shelley, while believ- 
ing in the immortality of the soul, refused to bow the knee to 
the Christian God. Soft, and glowing, and streaming from 
the very heart, that music of Shelley's, one might almost deem, 
would have charmed the maniac fury from godless freedom, 
and bent the minds of men to truth's own sway ; that temple 
which he reared to the sound of dulcet melody, and over which 
rested the glories of one of the princeliest imaginations that ever 
sublimed enthusiasm or personified thought, would, one might 
think, have drawn the nations to the worship of a calm and be- 
nign freedom, whose every word was wisdom and all whose 
looks were love ; but it was not so : the entrancing poetry of 
Shelley seems to us like an iEolean harp, hung out in the tempest 
of modern democracy, whose soft tremblings, whose plaintive 
persuasive murmurings, will never attune to harmony that 
hoarse and wintery blast. To another music than that must the 
nation march that will be free ; to no such gentle melody did 
the legions of the Republic march to meet Pyrrhus, the Ten 
Thousand to the field of Marathon ; other and inferior gifts 
God may grant to nations that have utterly forgotten Him, 
but it would seem that the crowning gift of freedom will be 
granted only to one in whose heart there is the belief in a God, 
md which can reverence an oath. Nor is it difficult to discern 
.he reason why : whatever may appear in the philosophic dia- 
gram, there are passions sleeping in the human breast that, in 
the open sea of actual life, wdll always awake, and overwhelm 
the vessel of freedom, if they are not quelled by one Eye. For 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 255 

this reason, we turn away from infidel radicalism ; it aims at 
an impossibility, it contradicts human history. 

From irreligious radicalism, which must end either in folly 
or in anarchy, we turn to Mr. Carlyle. We think that an 
earnest student of his works can discover in them a solution of 
our problem, though not one which can be pronounced hopeful 
or flattering. We have already defined what we believe to be 
the theory of government which is philosophically deducible 
from pantheism, and which, whether deliberately, consciously, 
and avowedly deduced or not, shapes itself naturally out in 
the mind of a thinker whose general mode of viewing human 
aflfairs is pantheistic. It will be no small confirmation of our 
statement, if we find that it coincides with actual circumstances 
in the case of one, whose writings, however wrathful and tor- 
rent-like, flow from a fountain of love, and who, in the prime 
of his gigantic energies, turned away from the pleasant places 
of literature, and the calm inviting fields of abstract specula- 
tion, to concentrate his powers upon practical life, and the an- 
swering of the great social questions of the day, but the whole 
tenor of whose thinking is pantheistic. Now, though we find 
in Mr. Carlyle's latest writings what seems to expose him to 
the objection of looking somewhat too fixedly on the past ; 
and although we can not think it impossible that our time and 
land might have furnished him with scenes and with men, as 
well fitted to enforce dramatically certain of those lessons, 
sumless we allow in their value, which he has read us in his 
Past and Present, as St. Edmundsbury and Abbot Samson ; 
yet we think it is but a superficial view of his whole works 
which does not unvail a deeper truth behind all his applause of 
the past, and prove that his eye is on the future. His mighty 
intellect and iron will are drawn, as by the sympathy of broth- 
erhood, toward the giant forces of the olden time ; he invaria- 



256 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

bly speaks of the present age as feeble and distracted, when 
contrasted with asfes long gone by ; and in the work we have 
named, he has, by the wizard power of his genius, summoned 
up, in living distinctness, certain great spectacles and men of 
the past, that those of the present may hide their heads before 
them. Yet who has proclaimed with such emphasis as he, that 
the law of all human things is progress, that it is vain to at- 
tempt to chain the future under the past ? We can not doubt 
that it is not his desire or hope that the nineteenth or twen- 
tieth century should become the thirteenth, but only that cer- 
tain fundamental characteristics should be found in both. It is 
our anxious wish fairly to represent the essential aspect of that 
new time, which, though removed by centuries, he still confi- 
dently predicts, and which is to be, not the past, but the life 
and truth of the past, transformed by the spirit and trans- 
figured by the light of the present. 

We conceive Mr. Carlyle, looking forward into the distance, 
to contem.plate a time characterized as follows : the rubbish of 
extinct customs has been swept aside, the dust of shattered 
systems has fallen from the air and sunk harmless into the soil, 
the discords of quackery and disputation have gone silent, and, 
alas ! the world-tree of the nations, planted of old in Judea, 
the Igdrasil of modern civilization, that bloomed into its chiv- 
alries, and yielded fair flowerage of literatures and philosophies, 
and bore its final fruit in the Lutheran Reformation, has fallen 
utterly, and moldered as into moorland moss ; the deep eter- 
nal skies of nature, the great laws of duty, of industry, and 
of hero-worship, have then again emerged, and roofed the 
world. We can not err in believing, that more and more the 
development of his system has tended to the pouring of con- 
tempt upon all the modes and agencies of our present social life : 
tha : he has scowled upon popular assemblies, upon free election, 



THE SOCIAL PKOBLEM OF THE AGE. 257 

upon all forms of public opinion, upon what is partly the voice 
and partly the guide of public opinion, the free press : that 
more and more clearly his all-embracing word — of command, 
of denunciation, of prophecy — has been hero-worship; and 
that, with more and more distinctness and decision, he has 
pointed at the severance of all men into two great classes, the 
foolish and the wise, the silently and blindly-governed and the 
silently and irresponsibly-governing. He has declared his utter 
abandonment of faith in the popular understanding, by pro- 
posing a step of manifest return, in the appointment of certain 
senators or privy-councilors by nomination. One of his late 
works contain an assertion, which, with absolute explicitness, 
declares him the eternal foe of freedom, which prescribes to it, 
in conferring or debating with him, but one tone, and that the 
tone which can so well be borrowed from his own works, of 
implacable defiance, namely, and irreconcilability ; which is 
probably the keenest and most bitter insult that was ever sent 
to the rude heart of the human race, ever leveled against that 
great class which has made up, and which for an indefinite 
number of centuries must continue to make up, the bulk of 
mankind, and if not a preponderating, at least a large propor- 
tion of the public voice of every free country ; the sad and 
amazing declaration, that " by any ballot-box Judas will go as 
far as Jesus." He has sneered at the advantages of liberty 
and palliated the evils of despotism, pointing to Epictetus and 
to Paul as showing the independence of the individual charac 
ter to any such influence. In a word, no one can question the 
fact, that Mr. Carlyle has drawn off altogether from the side 
of what is meant by radicalism ; that his political philosophy, 
while exterminating enough, has disjoined itself from the pop- 
ular enlightenment, the popular science, the popular election, 
which cluster round that standard. What, then, does he pro- 



258 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

pose, or prophetically proclaim 1 What, we ask, are we to 
find in his unceasing laudation of "might," in the analogies 
upon which he ventures, surely with a strange boldness, be- 
tween men and lower animals ? What in that circumstance 
which we deem of a profound interest and significance, his 
known admiration of Frederic the Great, who illustrates to 
us, with perfect and precise appropriateness, the ultimate de- 
velopment of a pantheistic theory of human government, of 
whom, whatever is doubtful, this may be considered sure, that 
the virtual declaration of his reign to his subjects was, All you 
can demand of me is, that I govern well, if you are happy, it 
is of no importance whether your happiness is that of freemen 
or slaves 1 The sum-total and ultimate goal of Mr. Carlyle's 
political thinking, we must conclude, has turned out to be what 
we showed was naturally and philosophically to be expected — 
Despotism. He will not attempt to marry freedom to strength, 
nor cherish the hope that the race may pass from the unintel- 
ligent energy of youth, when force followed authority, and 
thought had not lamed action, to the free energy of manhood ; 
the multitude are hopelessly foolish, and their highest bliss 
must be found, in bowing, with instinctive reverence, before an 
absolute sovereign, their eyes blinded by the glare of his sole 
and God-like will. All the inventions, all the sciences, all the 
enlightenment of modern times, may then be brought to clothe 
and feed them, as his ability renders possible, and as his bounty 
chooses to dispense ; only they must obey with no question as 
to the reason. This result does not anywise induce us to re- 
tract or modify what we have said of the deep patriotism and 
love lying in the heart of Mr. Carlyle ; but no less assured are 
we that this is the only logical deduction from his original ax- 
ioms, and the sole inference that can be drawn from the whole 
series of his works. Ancient and modern times may, accord. 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 259 

ing to him, differ in many things, but in one thing they must 
agree, that the highest political attainment of mankind is sub • 
jection to a wise and heroic but absolute will. 

Surely there is something sad and disappointing in this pros- 
pect opened up by Mr. Carlyle for the future. Has all that 
ancient and heroic struggling after freedom, then, been but the 
fruit of delusion and frenzy 1 Or was our race destined to 
expend all its heroism in a long, weary battle, and when at last 
it saw its enemy dead, when at last it did behold Despotism 
in the swoon of death, with its cruel and bloodshot eyeball at 
length glazing and becoming all lightless and ghastly, to find 
it had toiled and bled for a mere bauble, and that its only hope 
was to resuscitate the conquered monster 1 Has the path of 
humanity, over sandy deserts and up flinty mountains, through 
burning heats and bitter storms^ been to such a promised land 
as this '? A promised land ! We will not accept it, if its vines 
were richer than those of Eschol, and it flowed with milk and 
honey. Decided as is our difference with the radicals of the 
French Revolution, we have a deeper debate with Mr. Carlyle. 
From whatever quarter it is that we hear the note of disaffec- 
tion to freedom, we will not consent to hear it. We believe 
there is a strength of nobleness in the human heart to scorn 
such prosperity as even perfect despotism could bestow ; for 
no humiliating happiness will it sell its birthright of freedom ; 
men will rather be freemen, ay, and die for freedom, in f< 
rocky gorge of Hellas, or on bare moors in Scotland, than 
slaves amid the vines of Campania, or on the fragrant banks 
of Ganges. 

" Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame. 
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, 
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame ; 
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts — 



260 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

History is but the shadow of their shame — 
Art vails her glass, or from the pageant starts, 
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet, 
Staining that heaven with obscene imagery 
Of their own likeness." 

i We think that one great temptation of the age is to distrust 

and abandon Freedom. Her robe has been soiled with blood, 
her eye has been lit with frenzy, " blasphemy's loud scream" 
has mingled with her " music of deliverance ;" but she is, for 
all this, an angel of light, and we must not forego the faith and 
hope that her features will yet beam forth in their own im- 
mortal loveliness. We shall not lift the light from human 
annals, and silence the songs which have risen from earth's 
fairest homes and noblest battle-fields ; that thrill which the 
word freedom has ever sent through the heart of nations, has 
not been altogether meaningless. Upon any correct theory of 
man, the essential excellence of freedom is demonstrable ; not, 

\ certainly, as a present possession, but as a future attainment : 
it must be the aim of civilization to educe every faculty of 
the whole man, spiritual as well as physical, and this can never 
be done until man, as a civis, as one united indissolubly with 
his fellows, thinks and wills^ as well as works and feeds. At 
what period a nation may come to be capable of freedom, it 
were long to tell ; but this we may say with unfaltering lip, 
that the nation which has had freedom won for it by the wis- 
dom and dauntlessness of its sons, covers itself with everlast- 
ing infamy if it can not enter on the possession of its inheritance 
To accept Mr. Carlyle's view of the future, were to confess 
ourselves nationally worthy of this contempt ; and if we put 
" British freedom on the shelf," our heroic fathers that 'have 
bled for us from Bannockburn to Sedgemoor, will, from their 
high thrones, look down upon us with indignation and shame. 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 261 

We shall hope there may be found some other solution of 
our problem than any we have glanced at. But first it may 
be well to ask, whether it is to be considered easy. " The dis- 
cipline of slavery is unknown among us." Is there, then, to 
be no discipline ? Does human freedom mean the dissolution 
of government ? Are the shouts of nations at the name and 
prospect of liberty to be understood as indicating that freedom 
is easy, that it consists in every man's doing as he likes, that, 
when a nation has hurled tyranny aside, it has now only to 
gesticulate round plaster figures, or go in long white-robed 
procession to plant liberty- trees, or amuse itself with any other 
form of foolery ? No. The sternest task ever attempted by 
a nation is that of inaugurating and supporting freedom. The 
man who governs his own spirit has been, on supreme au- ^ 
thority, pronounced greater than he who takes a city : this 
man has attained personal freedom. National freedom is 
simply the government of its own spirit by a nation. It is 
the attempt on the part of a people, as on the part of a man, 
to have a will chainless as that of the wildest libertine, and yet 
live and work with united energy under wisdom's law. And 
the toils of Thermopylae, Morgarten, and Naseby, were, we 
think, slight to this. 

" Latius regnes avidum domando 
Spiritum, qiiam si Libyam remotis 
Gadibus jungas, et uterque Poenus 
Serviat uni." 

There is no free people to which we may not address the 
lines. It was a sublime duty, and not an alluring pleasure, 
whose distant gleam lit the eyes of nations as they looked to J 
liberty ! To attain true freedom seems to us to demand the 
very last agony of national effort, the severe and final endeavor 
by which a people at length reaches its throne. 



262 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

Christianity affords us the axioms on which alone a solution 
can be attempted : taking from irreligious radicalism the truth 
groped after by it, and accepting at the hands of Mr. Carlyle 
the vitally important lessons he has so powerfully re-proclaim- 
ed, avoiding anarchy on the one hand and despotism on the 
other, it sets the race on a path of unlimited advancement. 
Christianity pronounces men equal. All the protests which, 
in the course of human history, have been uttered against the 
oppression of the poor by the rich, and in behalf of the real 
native majesty of man, sink into insignificance when compared 
with that uttered by and embodied in Christianity ; there is 
one grain of truth in that claim which modern democracy, 
though in crazed, and maundering, and blasphemous tones, has 
so often put forth, to number the founders of Christianity in 
its ranks. In express terms, the Christian revelation declares 
all nations of the earth to be of one blood ; it pronounces all 
men equally the subjects of one King ; it makes the value of 
a soul infinite, and shows no difference between the worth of 
that of a beggar and that of a prince. Look into the stable at 
Bethlehem, on that night when crowned sage and humble shep- 
herd knelt by the cradle of that Babe who was their common 
King ; do you not see, in that spectacle, the bond of an essen- 
tial equality uniting all ranks, and making the regal purple 
and the peasant's russet faint and temporary distinctions 1 
Well might Coleridge say, that the fairest flower he ever saw 
climbing round a poor man's window, was not so beautiful in 
his eyes as the Bible which he saw lying within ! If all classes 
forsook the Gospel, one might expect the poor, the hard-toiling, 
the despised, to cling to it. Whatever Christianity may have 
become in our churches and in our times, the great class of 
the workers can find in its aspects no excuse for abandoning 
itself, imless they can show that the churches have rewritten 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 263 

the Bible ; unless they can allege that it no longer exhibits the 
divine Founder of Christianity preaching to the poor, com- 
panying with publicans and sinners, bringing into the bosoms 
of harlots the healing light of divine love ; unless they can 
show that it was the sanctioned usage of apostolic times to 
honor the rich in the Christian assemblage ; unless, in one 
word, they can deny that the Gospel holds forth to every man 
the prospect of being a king and priest to God. 

But Christianity does not make this truth powerless by leav- 
ing it alone. Mr. Carlyle, with his glance of lightning, saw 
the anarchy or the weakness to which modern freedom was 
tending; government he knew to be absolutely necessary. 
And this government, in some way or other, must be vested 
in able men. He called on the nations to obey their mighti- 
est, to worship them as heroes, and proceeded to scorn and 
scout the prevalent ideas and hopes of freedom. But Christi- 
anity meets this want too. It writes down civil government - 
as an ordinance of God. Not that it sanctions what has been 
called divine right or any such superficial and absurd notion : 
not that, in any part or passage of the sacred volume, it com- 
mands us to honor any one for the blood in his veins ; but that 
it recognizes the institution of government as a necessity, and 
enjoins men loyally to submit to it, and honor the king. Any 
one form of government is not appointed ; but government is 
stamped with approval, and by the promulgation of the truth 
of radical equality, a way is opened up by which freedom may 
flourish under any political form. How then are we, in every 
case, to find our rulers 1 Simply by finding those who are 
fitted to rule. Is the fact that they are thus fitted the reason \ 
of our honoring them, and our theory, after all, the same as 
that of hero-worship ? By no means. Their honor is reflected. 
Their fitness is the indication of the reason why they should ^ 



264 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

be honored ; the reason itself is because God has commis- 
sioned them ; and we are precisely as free in performing the 
tasks naturally appointed us, as they in performing those for 
which He has fitted them. Thus, as it embraced the one 
truth of democracy, Christianity embraces every particle of 
truth which Mr. Carlyle has contributed to human knowledge. 
All that he has said of the might and value of man, though 
perhaps demanding supplement and modification, can on Lhese 
terms be accepted without endangering human freedom ; every 
power of the hero can be brought to serve the race, and yet 
honor be done both to God and to man. The greatest will 
rule because God has given them the kingdom ; and the peo- 
ple shall be willing in the day of His power. A nation were 
perfectly free and perfectly governed, where the allied truths 
of equality and subordination were both in full force ; where 
not only the ablest governed, but where the channels to gov- 
ernment were absolutely unobstructed, and every man had 
the assurance that, if he were the ablest, he would be gov- 
ernor. 

Now it is not by any means our assertion or idea, that 
Christianity furnishes us v/ith a nostrum by which all the ills of 
society can be at once cured, its weakness turned to strength, 
and its powers brought into operation ; the bare fact, that any 
one, whencesoever he derive his specific, misconceives so far 
the nature of man and the evolution of history, as to imagine 
that the one is to be perfected and the other brought to a close 
by a magic word which he can utter, is conclusive evidence of 
his utter incapacity. It is our conviction that without Chris- 
tianity no nation can be regenerated ; that, unless we proceed 
upon its theory of man, we always fall into some fatal error; 
spreading out into the stagnant marsh of weakness and dis- 
union, tumbling in cataract-foam, writhing madly and streaked 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 265 

with blood, into the abyss of anarchy, or gliding into the Dead 
Sea of Despotism : but earnest thought and practical effort of 
our own are necessary in addition to all it gives us, calm con- 
sideration of the difficulties, conditions, and tools of our time, 
valor to dare and perseverance to do, Baconian induction and 
Platonic ardor. It is in this spirit and with this consciousness 
that we would offer a few hints toward the solution of that 
great problem — To show Freedom her hands, to point out 
how the energy of Despotism may be in her reasoning eye, 
the power of Despotism in her willing arm. It will be much 
if our words even call attention to this subject, for, in its pre- 
cise nature, we can not see that it has been fairly grappled 
with ; it is time that we began to have an express literature 
of freedom, that a systematic attempt were made by thinkers 
to teach the people to gird on the armor of free men. Our 
meaning will be fully apprehended, as we proceed to do even 
that little which is here possible. 

Casting, in the present day, a general glance on a free na- 
tion, with the view of discovering how it may best perform 
that august task to which, by the fact of its freedom, it is 
called by God, we think we should find ourselves called upon 
to treat of each of the following departments at some consid- 
erable length : — 

I. The central government. 

II. Free association, for philanthropic or reforming pur- 
poses. 

III. The relation of ranks. 

IV. Municipal government. 

In the brief remarks which follow, we shall confine ourselves 
entirely to the internal aspects of a free state. 

Touching the first of the above subjects of discussion, much 
were to be said. It suggests two questions : How is the gov- 

12 



266 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE 

erning body to be got together? and, To the discharge of what 
duties is it competent when assembled '? 

With all its drawbacks, and with full recognition of the 
dangers to which it is exposed, we have a grounded faith in 
popular election ; we strongly suspect no method was ever de- 
vised better adapted for getting the really strongest man to 
the top. That the great preacher of the duty of hero-worship, 
who has expressly asserted that the hero must and shall be 
worshiped, should have given expression to that utter denial 
of any power in the mass of a population to distinguish ability 
and worth which we have quoted, is surely somewhat singu- 
lar ; we thought he regarded the instincts of a people as truer 
than their thoughts, and should have expected that he would 
have some reliance upon the half-articulate consciousness of 
men, who are ever, to use his own phraseology, in contact with 
fact and reality. The philosophy of popular election we take 
to be, that it aims at stripping a man of all those extrinsic re- 
commendations and assisting influences, which he might pos- 
sess as member of a family or class, and subjecting him to the 
judgment, while offering him to the choice, of so large a num- 
ber of men, that he can be commended to them solely by his 
individual qualities ; and we should wish for no sounder 
method, by which to discover those men who, as ablest., ought 
to be set apart to govern their country, than one in which a 
vast body of electors contrived, either by instinct or educa- 
tion, to separate from those presented to their suffrages every 
adventitious circumstance, of birth, wealth, or connections, 
and asked regarding them simply what were their personal 
qualities. That we have not approached this, we frank' y con- 
cede ; but we can not grant that no attempt can be made to 
reach it. 

Were it a vain attempt to endeavor to educate the popula- 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 26*7 

tion of a free country to the special duties and functions of 
freemen ? It has been little tlionght of Much we can not 
doubt, might be done, both to awaken a sense of duty ^ and to 
guide to a selection of men. 

Unless integrity reigns in the heart of the free elector, we 
can not hope for a happy issue to the exercise of his office : we 
say not that free constituencies or other electing bodies are less 
marked by integrity, than is the case in any one instance where 
the number of electors is closely circumscribed ; but none the 
less is there room for improvement, and a call on all men to 
prom.ote it. Not only must virtue and honesty, generally con- 
sidered, be advocated in a free country, but freemen must be 
aroused to a sense of the nobleness, the responsibility, the 
sacred ness of the distinctive duties of the free. In a brave 
army, cowardice is reckoned more to be shunned than death : 
every brave soldier will rather die on his colors than abandon 
them. Travelers tell us of the Osmanli, that, however reduced 
they find him, how faded soever the glory of olden days, he 
yet regards, with a silent pride, the saber that hangs at his belt, 
letting no speck stain its brightness, but stinting himself rather 
than part with a jewel in its sheath : it seems to whisper of the 
old might of Islam, to tell him that in his veins runs the blood 
of conquerors, that he has in his heart a treasure dearer than 
life. Now, methinks, a freeman, with a heart in his breast, 
should treat an attempt to buy from him his honor, to purchase 
his free voice, as a true soldier would a charge of cowardice, 
or a valiant Osmanli a request to sell his saber for a bit of 
bread. Every free-born elector of Britain or America pos- 
sesses the birthright of a sacred duty ; he has one act to per- 
form which is worthy of the greatest, and for the right doing 
of which it were noble to die. " The honor of a freeman ;" — 
this^ in fiee nations, should be a formula for the expression of 



263 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

something stronger than death. But, on the other hand, might 
not the attempt of bribery be regarded as standing high in the 
list of crimes 1 Is such a thing impossible as high treason to 
the people, and is it unjust that it should be visited as severely 
as high treason to the prince ? 

And if the honor of freemen might be cherished, to guard 
the purity of election, its efficiency might unquestionably be 
promoted by the adoption of certain practical methods, by 
which the body of electors in free nations might be guided, at 
least in an important degree, in the selection of representatives. 
It is surely somewhat strange, that Mr. Carlyle, instead of de- 
nouncing popular election in that unqualified and indignant 
manner, did not think it might be possible to give such direct- 
ing hints to honest electors, as would aid them in fixing upon 
the worthiest candidate for their suffrages. Men of all ranks 
having such an irresistible tendency to bow down to the hero, 
might it not be possible, to some extent, to point the said hero 
out ? Is it so hard to indicate certain of the particular difficul- 
ties and dangers to be encountered by the elector 1 Would 
rough common sense, when set on its guard, be apt to be 
blinded by cajolery or fawning? Were it impossible to 
awaken electors to a feeling of the emptiness of mere talk, 
and train them to a habit of comparing words with actions 1 
Is there not spread widely such a measure of intelligence 
among our working men, and the general body of our freemen, 
that they could, especially if urged and instructed, inform 
themselves of the past life of their proposed representative, 
and judge whether, from his bearing in what spheres he has 
occupied, he has the heart, the head, the arm of a man ? Is it 
altogether hopeless, that they might learn a total indifference 
to the jingle of the guineas in his purse, and ask neither of 
what blood he comes, nor what are his possessions, but whether 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 269 

he is a man of ability, uprightness, information, discreet valor, 
and religion, worthy to become a British lawgiver 1 These are 
but a few lessons which electors might learn. More we need 
not add. This would be a wide and important department in 
a literature of freedom. 

So much directly bearing on electors ; one word on those 
whom they may elect. The question admits, to say the least, 
of discussion, whether it is not advisable, in our British Is- 
lands, to find a larger body of men from which representatives 
can be obtained. Here we desire to speak with somewhat of 
caution and hesitancy. Yet it does seem a reasonable idea, 
that a larger class of British subjects might, beneficially to the 
commonwealth, have opened up to them a path into the House 
of Commons. The aristocratic and moneyed classes alone can 
enter there. Is it certain that there is not thus excluded an 
important and available portion of the intellect of the coun- 
try 1 The shrewd, energetic, earnest citizen, of the lower order 
in the middle class, accustomed to think much and work hard, 
enters not. The bulk of the intellect of the powerful fourth 
estate must rule without the doors of the Senate House. That 
a powerfully-minded member of the working class, who knows 
the feelings and wants of his brethren, should ever be admitted, 
seems to be regarded as an extravagant idea ; yet, can it be 
doubted that such might prove an abler senator than the gam- 
bler for fame with an abundance of money, or the brisk scion 
of the nobility, who can drive tandem and is a capital shot ? 
We scout the idea of paying our legislators in gold ; we fear 
they occasionally make us pay for the honor of employing 
them in even rarer coin. A few evils might arise from making 
it possible for membership to become a trade ; would there 
arise a greater number than from continuing to make it a fash- 
ionable amusement ? We do not regard with any measure (^ 



270 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

doubt the fact, that governhig bodies, of ^vhich the members 
have been or are paid, have proved themselves not one whit 
less patriotic, and we are inclined to add able, than those 
where the practice has never been introduced. 

The question of the functions to which the governing body 
in a free nation is competent, is one which interests us very 
deeply. The notions which float in the public mind on this 
subject are, vve think, vague, and not unfrequently erroneous. 
There is a tendency, fatal in its consequences, and decried by 
earnest men, to confound true freedom with laissez faire ; as 
if liberty meant no rule at all, or as if it even implied any 
curtailing of the executive ; instead of government, effective 
and indefinitely extended, by the best, with consent of all. 
National freedom, too, is apt to be confounded with individual 
liberty, and thus to lose its power. A people may be nation- 
ally impotent from fear to meddle with personal rights. The 
idea is too common, that in a free state the government ought 
to exercise little or no control over private aflairs, and that 
the state is free, in proportion as this is the case. It is forgot- 
ten that the essence of tyranny consists, not in the ftict that 
men obey, but that they do so without knowing and compre- 
hending the reason of their action ; and that the life of free- 
dom consists, not in any exemption from obeying, but in obedi- 
ence after due exercise of that will which God has implanted 
in men and nations, after assurance obtained that submission 
or active compliance are promotive of the general welfare, and 
assent asked and accorded. 

Now, it will of course be seen that we here advocate no 
particular measures ; but we do say that we now oppose a 
misconception of the very essence of liberty, one which dooms 
it to be utterly ineffective for any great national end. The one 
characteristic of real freedom is, that a nation acts with consent 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 2*71 

and intelligence ; you can not decide whether a nation is free 
or enslaved by knowing what its government does, you must 
know hoiu it does it. The man is as free who commands him- 
self to be bound, with express directions that no attention be 
paid to any subsequent shrieks or implorings, that he may 
undergo an excruciating operation, as he who sweeps the moor- 
land on his own steed, or gazes over the face of a flashing 
sea from the deck of his own bounding yacht. We shall il- 
lustrate these remarks by a modern instance. Every one is 
aware of the prevalency of what has been named bureaucracy 
on the Continent ; that government, through its officials, ex- 
ercises a superintendence over most private business, settling, 
it may be,, the order in which streets are to be built, the 
manner in which houses are to be constructed, the establish- 
ment of every sort of mercantile company, and so on. This 
circumstance produces a great deal of intermeddling on the 
part of government functionaries, little annoyances neces'sarily 
arise, and many arguments are urged against the system ; we 
greatly mistake if it is not frequently looked upon as an in- 
tegral portion of Continental despotism, and quite out of ac- 
cordance with our British freedom. We neither defend nor 
impugn the system ; but we allege that it has no necessary 
connection either with despotism or liberty. If a nation, act- 
ing through men by itself deputed, men who represent the 
national will, come to the conclusion that the beauty of its 
cities would be enhanced by their streets being built accord- 
ing to plans approved by a body of artistically qualified men, 
it continues a perfectly free state, though no one of its citizens 
can, at his own whim or caprice, inflict an architectural nuisance 
upon his fellow-townsmen. If it is discovered by a nation 
that the malconstruction of private dwellings frequently occa- 
sions fire and gives rise to extensive damage, or that the stu- 



2*72 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

pidit.y or carelessness of individuals results in the confusion 
of titles and the multiplication of quarrels and lawsuits, it may 
most freely appoint bodies of judicious men, architects and 
lawyers, to inspect plans and titles. And so on. The nation 
is ever free when itself wills the restraints which on itself it 
imposes. We do not say it is necessary that it impose such ; 
by no means ; but that every such measure is, in strictest ac- 
cordance with real freedom, open for consideration. We do, 
however, go the length of saying, and that with all emphasis 
and earnestness, that, until freedom takes this positive, and as 
it were aggressive attitude ; until it learns to extend its ex- 
ecutive in various directions, and to bring the sifted intellect 
and the concentrated will of the nation to look upon with 
scrutinizing glance, and to order with energy and exactness, the 
various modes and departments of national life, it will never 
fully unfold its powers. As yet, it has not been fairly pitted 
against despotism. It has been individual effort in free na^ 
tions which has been matched against national effort in despotic 
states. We trust it will one day prove possible, with the per- 
fect preservation of individual freedom, of which more pres- 
ently, to pitt national effort in free nations against national 
effort in despotisms, and to demonstrate that the analogy be- 
tween the nation and the individual here too holds good : that, 
as the free poet sings more sweetly and more thrillingly than 
he whose song is heard through a grating ; and as three free 
warriors will hurl back a host of enslaved invaders ; so a na- 
tion, which freely collects its reason, and gathers its will, and 
girds up its loins, and exerts itself in all manner of regulating 
and compelling action, will in peace tower in calm wisdom, a 
Pallas among the nations, and in war ride over their necks, as 
the proud vessel, with all sails set and every spar in order, 
but with a living will on board, rides over the poor slaves of 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 2*73 

moon and tempest, the wandering billows. It were certainly 
competent to the British nation, it were consistent with its 
freedom, nay, it were positively the awakening to vigor and 
action of its freedom, to have all great public concerns trans- 
acted by men better qualified to transact them than private 
individuals can be hoped to be, by men who, of the whole na- 
tion, are best fitted to transact them. Until this commences 
on a grand scale, the capacities of a free nation, as distinguished 
from those of free individuals, will not be unfolded. It ap- 
pears to us, that it is the general obliviousness to this great 
aspect of freedom, and the kindred phenomenon of testiness 
to all touching of so-called private rights, which have given 
edge and occasion to such denunciations, on the part of Mr. 
Carlyle, as we have quoted. 

In treating of the central government in a free country, the 
subject which engages our attention is national freedom. In 
turning to the second of those categories under which a dis- 
cussion of the whole matter seemed to us to admit of being 
ranged, we are met by the distinct yet related topic of indi- 
vidual freedom. Association for philanthropic or reforming 
purposes is a necessary phenomenon in a free country ; and 
of all the questions which present themselves to him who re- 
flects upon the nature and working of freedom, it might be 
alleged that no one is of more importance, and perhaps diffi- 
culty, than that which bears upon the connections and relations 
of this form of force, for it is none other than a form of force, 
with that central power which, strictly, represents the thinking 
and acting power of a free nation. We believe it to be a 
prevalent idea, that voluntary association ought to do very 
much, if not all, in a free country ; it is to individual enter- 
prise, to the thought and energy of the private subject, attract- 
ing and combining into an available force the intellects and 
12* 



2*74 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

energies of his individual fellow-citizens, that we naturally look 
for the performance of great undertakings ; we look not to 
government, but to individual co-operation, for water, for gas, 
for steam conveyance to the ends of the world, for railways 
and electric wires to cover our own island. It is our profound 
conviction that we may permit this idea to carry us too far ; 
that the hope of freedom at present is to be placed in a large 
measure in its learning to take up the tools of despotism in a 
free hand, and to perform great national enterprises, not by 
the blundering, and in many cases blinded agency of provincial 
association, but by the disinterested will of what in a perfect 
state of freedom would certainly be, and even in an imperfect 
state of freedom we believe generally is, the highest intellect 
of the nation, its freely elected central power. But we do not 
at all hesitate in pronouncing voluntary association a natural, 
wholesome, and inevitable growth of freedom. It is possible, 
indeed, that it may be, to a large extent, merely temporal ; 
and, seeing a grander possibility of attainment ahead, we can 
not say we should regret its proving to have been so : it is 
possible that it may in all its forms mark merely a stage in 
the life of free nations, a part of a great system of practical 
education ; that it will be only when they awaken to the dangers 
of individual association, when they find railway companies 
ruining themselves and putting the public to inconvenience, 
water companies bickering and battling in the presence of a 
thirsty and unwashed township, private corporations perpetuat- 
ing the causes of disease or preventing the beautifying of cities, 
that they w^ill fully and joyously conceive that it is nowise in- 
consistent with perfect liberty that the management of railways, 
and we know not how much else, be ultimately vested in a body 
of national rulers chosen by themselves. Yet it is impossible, 
on the one hand, to deny the fact that association has its roots 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 275 

in the soil of liberty, and, on the other, that there may, in any 
conceivable case, remain a work for it to do. All national 
freedom is founded on individual ; the mind and tongue must 
first be free ; and this being granted, the necessary origin of 
association is at once perceived : no man finds it good to be 
alone ; man feels at once more happy and more powerful when 
he acts with his brothers ; and therefore the thought in his 
head, the wish in his heart, will reach his tongue, in the form 
of a request or exhortation, addressed to other men, to sympa- 
thize with him, or work along with him. Christian philan- 
thropy, of which we have said so much, is but a form of free 
association ; on the hypothesis that Christianity and Christian 
love exist in a free nation, its rise is unavoidable. 

In his essay on The Signs of the Times, an essay marked by 
his usual penetrating intellectual energy, and perhaps remark- 
able, even among his essays, for the brilliant and musical 
terseness of its style, Mr. Carlyle divides the forces which act 
in human affairs into the dynamic or individual forces, love, 
religion, enthusiasm, and so on, and the mechanical, which arise 
from organization and union. His distinction and classification 
we accept as correct, but he has omitted something which to 
us appears of great importance, to define, namely, the connec- 
tion between the two provinces of human affairs on which he 
comments. In the close of his essay, he distinctly recognizes 
the soundness and necessity of each set of forces. But has he 
fully considered how they are connected, how the machinery 
and the dynamics are related 1 The connection is that of 
simple, proportional, indissoluble sequence. The machinery 
arises from the dynamics, the organized and united force re- 
sults from the individual, by a necessity which we can not ex- 
hibit, because its negation can not be even conceived. An 
army of which the soldiers are drilled, marshaled, and then 



276 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

enlisted ; a tree that unfolds its leaves, and strikes down its 
stem, m\di finally deposits its seed ; — these are precisely anal- 
ogous conceptions to that of a society which has not originated 
in individual force. Goethe said his opinion w\"i3 infinitely 
strengthened by the assent of even one. In his aphorism is 
to be found the sole possible explication of that machinery for 
the carrying on of various objects, which seems to Mr. Carlyle 
to be in such excess in our time. An individual or dynamic 
force acts in an individual bosom ; it is communicated to an- 
other bosom, to a third, to a fourth : these all now have a com- 
mon bond, a common force ; a society, an organization,, if you 
will, a machine, is formed. The machinery must always be in 
a precise ratio to the dynamics. Whence is it, then, that we 
see so little machinery in the olden time, say in the time of 
Luther, and so much in our day '? For a simple and conclu- 
sive reason. Before Luther could at all disseminate his views, 
he also had, by immovable necessity, to find and form his 
machinery ; men heard his voice, and gathered round him, and 
he was speedily in the center of a square with fixed bayonets, 
powerful for aggression or defense. The effectiveness of this 
square, besides, depended precisely on the amount of the dy- 
namic force in each breast ; the more perfect the individual, 
the more perfect the machine. 

But Luther, or any other man of Luther's time, had a much 
harder task to perform in securing his machinery, than any 
man can have now-a-days. It is, we have seen, the great lead- 
ing characteristic of our age, that thought is more fluent, that 
men more easily communicate and draw together, than was ever 
the case in this world. It is because every dynamic force can 
now, wdth extreme facility, gather round it a machinery, 
that the land is covered wdth organizations and societies. Had 
Luther lived now, he had found it a more easy task to spread 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. '1 i I 

his doctrines than he did in the sixteenth century, but he could 
not by any possibility have spread them without gathering 
round him a living machine of men. If, therefore, desirous of 
urging a point, we said that Mr. Carlyle, in opposing these two 
provinces of our affairs, in saying we have too much machinery, 
and too little dynamics, gave expression to a sheer natural im- 
possibility, we should speak the actual truth ; every human 
organization must originate in dynamic, in individual force. The 
truth, of course, is, that it is in the latter we are always to 
look for the evil ; change the quality of your dynamic force, 
and all, save some matter of practical detail, is done ; and we 
most willingly put this interpretation upon Mr. Carlyle's essay, 
and benefit by his superb enforcement of the great duty of 
purifying the nation's heart that the issues of its life may be 
pure. In those stern old ages^ it was a serious matter for a 
man to gain his machinery ; it was only when he saw, as by 
the light of a cherub's sword, and felt himself commanded to 
speak as by a voice from a bush burning yet not consumed, 
that he would risk his life for his doctrine. In our day, every 
man, who has a crotchet and a well or not very well hung 
tongue, can gather his company, can form his association, can 
construct his machine. Would you wonder that the flower 
which grows in the hothouse has a sicklier look, than that 
whose roots had to cling to the solid rock in the scowl of the 
norland blast ? Mr. Carlyle looked over the luxuriant field 
of modern society, and saw the growth of organizations most 
abundant, in great measure a growth of weeds ; accepting the 
hard-won conditions of our time, we recognize it as well that 
plants spring quickly, but would direct all energy to pluck up 
such weeds, and to examine the seed sown. 

In the brief glance we took at the development of modern 
philanthropy, in our chapter on Wilberforce, we offered one ^r 



278 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE- 

tAYO suggestions, which will be found applicable tc the working 
of free associations in general. We can not enter further up- 
on the subject, inviting and important as it is ; the reader will 
find it treated, in several of its important aspects, by modern 
writers on political economy. 

On the subject of the relation between nink and rank in a 
free state, we could enlarge to an indefinite extent, but we shall 
say almost nothing. It is unnecessary to enter on its discus- 
sion, so ably and lucidly has it been treated by Mr. Mill, Mr. 
Greg, and others. The only relation which we can in future 
hope to see subsist between employer and employed, is that 
which we have seen uniting Budgett and his men. " We have 
entered," says Mr. Mill, " into a state of civilization, in which 
the bond that attaches human beings to one another, must be 
disinterested admiration and sympathy for personal qualities, 
or gratitude for unselfish services, and not the emotions of pro- 
tectors toward dependents, or of dependents toward protect- 
ors." It seems to us a demonstrable point that this relation is 
at once possible and noble ; and while we do not by any means 
disguise from ourselves its difficulty, we can sympathize with 
no attempt to replace it by another. We think we can detect 
a two fold error by which it is impeded. One half of society 
lauds freedom in name, and even, verbally, evinces a desire 
that it should be extended to all : while there is either an 
ignorance of its real character, demands, and difficulties, or an 
unwillingness to meet them ; a backwardness, above all, to 
embrace, in all its significance, the essential truth of freedom, 
that the soul of every man is of equal worth, and, of natural 
consequence, the hardship or inconvenience of one class, save 
where special injustice is involved, no more to be deprecated 
than those of another. When the rich think of the poor, the 
ruling and enjoying classes of the toiling and obeying, their 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 2*79 

ideas run mainly, we suspect, on the retaining of these in quiet 
and content, in comfort, indeed, and it is to be hoped in happiness 
(for we are very tender-hearted), but in a condition of inferi- 
ority ; and if this is the case, it is not to be wondered at that 
the patronized classes may entertain a half suspicion of kind- 
ness, as if allied to charity. On the other hand, we think we 
perceive among the working-classes, in their yearning toward 
freedom, an error, if possible, still more pernicious : the idea 
that this liberty for which they long, is a certain worldly good ; 
a dim, half-conscious notion, that the free are those who sit at 
a well-furnished table, while the only partially free or enslaved 
pick up the crumbs ; and that the grand object of these last is 
just to change places. Of the unnumbered errors that went to 
compound the idea to which the patriot Frenchman of 1793 
gave the title of freedom, perhaps none was more insulting to 
the name of liberty and the soul of man, than the conception, 
ever emerging in the tumult of the time, that freedom meant 
the procuring of some great accession of eatables and drinka- 
bles by the populace ; that it would prove the opening of ex- 
haustless breasts of abundance ; that it was to be, in great 
measure, the satisfaction of the strong but not very sublime 
human faculty of greed. Now, there was just a particle of 
truth here, the particle, namely, that in a state of perfect free- 
dom, the physical condition of all classes would be the best 
possible in the circumstances ; but this is precisely the lowest 
truth, for the sake of which a man can desire freedom ; and a 
pre-eminent cause why the stern republican goddess poured 
such indignant contempt upon the worship offered her by the 
patriots of France, was, that they forgot the high blessings she 
sheds upon the spirit, and bent before her Avith the prayer that 
she would degrade herself to minister first and chiefly to the 
body. Freedom does not absolutely guarantee physical opu- 



280 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

lence to any class ; her aim is to fix every man in his station, 
and give him there his desert : to enable, on the one hand, the 
workman to toil with nr feeling of inferiority or self-contempt, 
in the sense that it is not man and injustice, but God and 
nature, which ordain his labor and appoint his sphere, and in 
the deliberate and intelligent belief, that it is, in all respects, 
physical and spiritual, best for him that the man whom he 
obeys actually commands him, receiving, in respect of severer 
and more precious work, a higher reward ; and, on the other 
hand, to take every ray of insulting pride or condescending 
insolence out of the eye of the master, as having no essential 
superiority over his employed, as deserving a kindly respect 
but no reverence, as simply doing, in his sphere, that duty 
which his equal but not equally endowed brother does in his. 

Whether the precise ^rm of the relation between the indus- 
trious classes and those who employ them may, to any consid- 
erable extent, and at an approaching time, undergo alteration, 
is a question of no small interest. We do not regard it as a 
matter open to dispute that the gradual superseding of the an- 
cient method, of wages given by a master and work done by a 
servant, is, in extensive departments of our affairs, possible and 
desirable. We see no effective mode of counteracting that 
often-deprecated tendency of civilization to concentrate wealth 
in certain quarters, save by carrying out the principles of co- 
operation in the manuficturing, and perhaps also the mercan- 
tile provinces ; this, certainly, is a thoroughly efficient means 
of that counteraction ; and it were hard to say how there could 
be pointed out, on the whole, a more perfectly wholesome and 
promising phenomenon in a state, than that of workmen, by 
force of thrift, sobriety, education, and sense, becoming their 
own employers. The achievement here being lofty, the task 
is again difficult; but we would fliin cherish the hope that 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 281 

there is a stamina in the British working class ultimately to 
effect it. Mr. Greg has discussed this subject in a truly mas- 
terly manner. 

To tell the working classes that they are perfectly enlight- 
ened and endowed with every manly virtue, that they are, 
therefore, unjustly treated by the higher ranks, while their 
country suffers from their not sharing more largely in political 
rights, is an extremely easy, but signally useless proceeding. 
We look with no forbidding coldness on attempts which may 
be made toward any really valuable extension of those rights ; 
but we deem it gross flattery to our lower classes in general, 
to say, that they stand remarkably high in culture and moral 
worth ; we think the fact does not admit of disguise, that the 
work of their education, using the word in its widest sense, has 
yet, in very great measure, to be done, and that it will be no 
easy task ; while it is our profound conviction, that Britain, as 
a whole, possesses such an amount of freedom, that no class 
within its borders, morally and intellectually strong, can be 
long defrauded of its substantial rights or excluded from its 
natural station. We have not to win our freedom ; we have 
but to learn to use it ; and we think both that the higher clas- 
ses may learn boldness in proceeding with reform, and the 
lower encouragement in waiting, from the fact that revolution 
for the attainment of any political privileges in our island 
would now constitute an absolute novelty in the history of na- 
tions. Can any man conceive so large a number of British citi- 
zens as would constitute a force sufficient to make itself felt by 
the government of the empire, deliberately putting life and liv- 
ing to the hazard for all that an almost ideal reform could oflcr 1 
Or, on the other hand, can any man fairly consider the state of 
feeling in our higher classes toward the lower, the desire of fair 
play and equitable sharing of the advantages of liberty, which 



282 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

may be pronounced universal, and the encouraging sympathy 
and glad accordance of aid, which abound to an unexampled ex- 
tent, and maintain, that any reform of real value, upon which the 
great body of the working class, not any pitiful and fractional 
portion of the scum and froth of that class, as in the Chartist 
movement, has earnestly set its heart, will be long denied it 1 
Any particular scheme of all-effecting political attainment will 
for the future prove a mere ig7iis fatuus^ a mere deluding, dis- 
tracting phantom to our working classes, turning them from 
the path of their real interests, blinding them to their substan- 
tial hopes. In moral and intellectual education ; in the acqui- 
sition of an intellectual power to discern their true position, 
with all its possibilities and perils, as affected by modern in- 
vention, and of a moral ability to accommodate themselves 
thereto ; in gradually becoming fit to be their own masters ; 
in bridling passion, and subduing intoxication ; lies the true 
game of the working classes. 

The method in which this great and momentous process of 
education is to be proceeded with, can not be here discussed. 
We shall merely, in one or two words, guard against what we 
deem an important misconception, and indicate the precise 
quarter in which promising efforts are to be made. 

Mr. Ruskin, a man concerning whom, whatever may be the 
minor diversities of opinion, it seems agreed, that his entrance 
upon literature will, in all time to come, mark an epoch, and 
that one of beneficent change and noble advancement, in the 
history of art, has lately turned his attention, to some con- 
siderable extent, to certain of our social aspects. With a 
nobleness the more beautiful that it is evinced with manifest 
unconsciousness, and which is of a sort very rarely found 
among men who, like him, have devoted life-long and concen- 
trated attention to any one department, whether of science, 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 283 

literature, or art, he deliberately, in a small volume which he 
has lately published, declares the most important portion of 
the Avhole of a great work devoted to the advocacy of particu- 
lar ideas in pure art, to be that which most men w^ould have 
either overlooked or considered a point of incidental and sec- 
ondary interest, their bearing upon the true liberty, the real 
advantage, in one word, the life, of the workman. This de- 
claration he associates wdth a complaint, that, save in a single 
instance, critics have overlooked the chapter in which he lias 
discussed the point. His remonstrance is no doubt reasonable ; 
the chapter deserved serious consideration. That considera- 
tion w^e are the more willing to bestow^ from an unwavering 
assurance, that the truth which lies in his words must prove 
useless or even dangerous, if not dissociated from the import- 
ant oversight and the essential error which we remark in his 
paragraphs. We shall quote one or two of his words : — '• I 
know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of right 
freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to 
obey another man, to labor for him, yield reverence to him or 
to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty 
— liberty from care." Again : — "There might be more free- 
dom in England, though her feudal lords' lightest words were 
worth men's lives, and though the blood of the vexed husband- 
man dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while 
the animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed the 
factory smoke, and the strength of them is given daily to be 
wasted into the fineness of a web, and racked into the exact- 
ness of a line." To remedy this sad state of matters, he offers 
three suggestions, in the form of advices, to those who, directly 
or indirectly, employing workmen, expose themselves to the 
danger of falling into the guilt of slaveholding. The second 
and third are almost corollaries from the fii'st, and the latter 



284 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

has reference exclusively to art. The first is as follows : — 
" Never encourage the manufacture of any article not abso- 
lutely necessary, in the production of which Invention has no 
share." 

We think we need not now tarry to prove that, in speaking 
of freedom as a liberty from care, Mr. Euskin totally miscon- 
ceives its nature ; that its precise and essential characteristics 
are will and ability to undertake this same honorable and 
manlike, though, no doubt, at times oppressive care ; that ex- 
emption from the labor of personal and earnest thought is the 
most tempting of all the bribes of despotism, and its deliberate 
and unalterable rejection, the express act by which a man vin- 
dicates his title and asserts his power to be free. When rev- 
erence is the hereditary claim of any man, or set of men, when 
the word of one man is worth the life of another, no soft cush- 
ions of indolence on which to lie, no dealing out of dainties 
on which to batten, can effect any change in the essentially 
despotic and slavish construction of society. This original and 
ruining flaw in his conception of freedom must weaken and un- 
settle the whole system of Mr. Ruskin's thinking on the sub- 
ject. But, leaving this, let us inquire into the worth of his 
recommendation as to invention. We think it is of important 
value ; but let us carefully define the limits of its operation. 
No minute investigation or very deep reflection is necessary to 
enable us to do so : we have not to inquire how far, in the sev- 
eral departments of our national work, the action of individual 
invention may be combined with the agency of machinery : 
we have but to refer, on the one hand, to the positive super- 
seding of the human arm, by that steam-power which, in all 
provinces of manufactures, does the work of millions, and, on 
the other, to the numerous trades in which the labor is entirely 
and necessarily mechanical. The unnumbered thousands who 



THE SOCIAL PKOBLEM OF THE AGE. 285 

toil in factories, work, according to the objection, in a manner 
purely mechanical. If Mr. Rusk in proposes to cast the steam- 
engine back into the womb of oblivion, we shall not answer 
him ; if the mechanical action of those who watch the huge 
wheels as they set in motion a thousand looms, is a necessary 
and unchangeable fact, we can not consider that we have any 
choice save to accept it and make the most of it. And how is 
invention to be brought to bear in many ancient and indispen- 
sable callings 1 The plowman and the sower must lay furrow 
over furrow, and cast the corn across the fallow ground, much 
in the manner of their fathers. We see not how the baker or 
slater can show much invention in the exercise of their voca- 
tions, and we think any attempt on their part to do so were 
decidedly to be deprecated. An inventive shopkeeper, who 
departed from established usage in the disposal of his goods, 
and manifested a talent for eloquence in their recommendation, 
would, we trust, speedily be bankrupt ; the navvy is a suffi- 
ciently respectable citizen, and a set of navvies at their work 
a noble and exhilarating spectacle, but if each of the gang took 
to an original mode of shoveling the earth and using the pick- 
ax, it might, especially if they happened to belong to the sis 
ter isle, partake of the comic; the grim-looking personage 
whose bright eyes look out from a blackened and streaming 
visage, and whose Cyclopean arms hammer the white-hot iron, 
beyond aiming well and hitting hard, has little to attempt in 
the way of discovery ; and any attempt to find a vent for 
original genius in that useful and elevated profession, sweeping 
of chimneys, would full surely end in smoke. The fact is per- 
fectly plain : it is but to a fractional part of our working popu- 
lation that Mr. Ruskin's suggestions can apply. But to a frac- 
tional part it does, and that in a very important manner. Mr. 
Ruskin is a writer on art, and it is natural that his general 



286 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

views should be colored by his continual thinking on art and 
its kindred subjects. Invention is the soul of art; but the 
common handicrafts of life are in great measure its absolute 
negation. We sympathize unreservedly in his every word, in 
so far as artistic matters are concerned ; we agree, too, that in 
all provinces where invention can be profitably and naturally 
introduced, it is to be encouraged ; and we think he throws out 
an available and weighty hint, when he bids all classes consider 
what sort of handiwork they chiefly encourage, and how it 
affects the health and freedom of the workman : but when he 
ventures to cast his eye over that vast tree of national life of 
which art is but the final flower, and in each leaf, where is tc 
be expected only the sober and accustomed green, looks foi 
the golden and roseate beauty which is naturally to be sought 
in that crowning efflorescence of existence to which he has de- 
voted his powers, we can not question that he errs. 

What intellectual and moral education can be introduced 
iato the working of each of the employments of the body of 
the people, we should rejoice to see taken advantage of; but 
it were deeply to be deplored if the benefits to be hence de- 
rived prevented our clearly perceiving the direction in which 
the most important progress is to be made. It is not by en- 
tering on the fantastic undertaking of getting rid of machinery, 
but by making it do for us our rude and physical work, that 
we can advance. As by a spell of supreme potency, modern 
science and invention have summoned to our aid, to be our 
unresisting and irresistible slaves, the mechanical powers which 
thunder in a thousand factories, and hang their black smoke- 
banners over our towns. Is it impossible, that such advan- 
tage be taken of their capabilities that a larger amount of 
leisure than heretofore may be found for purely intellectual 
pursuits by our mechanical workmen ? And may not the in- 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 287 

ventive exercise, which was formerly found in inclividnal op- 
erations, be advantageously foregone, for the sake of the en- 
hanced freshness of intellect and keenness of relish, with which 
he, who has been engaged during working hours in a mechan- 
ical employment, will turn at its close to the pursuit of science, 
or the study of literature 1 If we can not regard this prospect 
with hope, we must abandon hope altogether ; to break asunder 
our engines and quench our furnaces, all will concede, were an 
attempt which could originate only in a delirious dream : but 
there are not wanting facts to justify us in cherishing the ex- 
pectation, that indefinite advancement is here possible. The 
manufacturing workmen, we understand from Mr. M'Colloch, 
are a particularly intelligent class ; and the free libraries of 
Manchester and Liverpool, with the ranges of quiet, studious, 
dignified, and happy readers, which we have seen in at least 
one of them, give surely a conclusive testimony to the truth 
of our words. And if workmen gradually became their own 
masters, and could thus to some extent control the feverish in- 
tensity of manufocturing competition, how nobly consistent 
with freedom, and how plainly practicable, were this whole 
scheme of advancement ! Our hope, then, of the education of 
the working class rests on two things : first, that working hours 
should be shortened ; and, second, that operatives prove them- 
selves possessed of the moral power, and the capability of in- 
tellectual pleasure, which alone would make such curtailment 
a blessing, and not a curse. Let no one imagine we are insen- 
sible to the difficulties which are to be met with in any attempt 
at improvement here ; we know them to be stern, complicated, 
all but overpowering ; but however steep and rugged the way, 
there is no other. Did we say the attainment of perfect spir- 
itual freedom was easy ? 

We have left ourselves no space to speak of Municipal Gov- 



288 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

ernment. We can merely express our profound feeling of its 
importance — our conviction that, if our towns are to be beau- 
tified and cleared, if we must not relinquish every hope of 
such an artistic education for the mass of our people as is pre- 
sented by the very streets of certain Continental towns — if, in 
one word, all those local duties and reforms are to be rightly 
performed, to which a central government can not, under any 
circumstances, be expected to direct its attention, the Munici- 
pal Institutions of a large empire must be in free and vigorous 
working. 

We have thus, in faint and partial outline, traced at least 
the initial steps in what, without unsettling any part of our 
social system, without any startling innovation, and without 
the very possibility of revolution, might prove a thorough and 
all-embracing reform. We can imagine our words appearing 
to some to have an unreal and Utopian sound, and it had been 
easy to throw ourselves open to this charge ; but we think we 
have not in any measure done so. It were surely a depress- 
ing consideration, if, to the calmest and most careful thought, 
it seemed an impossibility that freedom might yet achieve 
triumphs unexampled, perhaps undreamed of, in the history 
of the world. It were Utopian, indeed, if we represented the 
attainment as easy ; and all we have said would deserve to be 
put aside with a pitying smile, if we fancied that by one effort, 
or through the wisdom, theoretic and practical, of any one 
scheme, a nation was to be regenerated. But if we confess 
that the realization of perfect freedom appears to us, in every 
aspect, a work of difficulty ; and ground our hopes of this real- 
ization upon the gradual, almost or altogether imperceptible 
pervasion of the nation by a deeper nobleness and a more 
substantial intelligence ; we see not on what a charge of Uto- 
pianism can be based. We can not even profess to entertain 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 289 

immediate or sntigiiine hope ; but we will not relinquish a pro- 
found conviction of possibility, or a clear assurance of duty. 
And as we set out from Christianity, as we found in it the 
basis upon which a system of free social relations could be 
reared, it is only by returning to Christianity, and finding in 
it a golden band to unite the whole in safety, harmony, and 
beauty, that we can irrefragably demonstrate the possibility, 
while assured it is the sole possibility, of the execution of our 
scheme. The real happiness of freedom was never in the 
course of human history attained by a nation morally weak ; 
licentious, irreverent, feeling itself bound by no relations to an 
unseen world. The alliance of- freedom and irreligion, which 
we have seen attempted in these latter ages, is anomalous and 
impossible. Show me a sniffling, unbelieving, debauched, 
playacting thing, gesticulating on its platform or stump, swell- 
ing with conceit and self-importance, listening open-eared for 
any faint breath of applause, basely flattering the crowd before 
it, mere animal greed in its eye, and mere tirade about the 
felicity of the rich and the removal of taxes on its lips, and I 
will show you that which no earthly power will ever make 
free. That heart has not width enough to hold the love of 
freedom, that poor head can not form its very conception ; it 
is but an imaginary and absurd delusion 6f which that tongue 
is prating : freedom disowns the whole exhibition. But show 
me a working man, who, from his free fireside, with his own 
loving wife beside him, and his children smiling in his face, 
can look beyond earth and time, and see a King, from whom 
he holds a charter of freedom, seated on an eternal throne, 
the rays from His eye falling equally on the king and the 
peasant, the oak and the lichen ; who has not contracted his 
wishes and thoughts upon the spreading of his table and the 
covering of his back, or any thing which he will have to sur- 

13 



290 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE AGE. 

render to the cold grasp of death \ who has not denied his im 
material existence, but knows that it is as a thinking, reason 
ing, loving spirit, that man has a real existence and a peren- 
nial nobleness ; and I will show you one on whom freedom 
will look with hope. Hear the calm testimony of history on 
this point: the following passage, on the disbanding of the 
great army of Puritanism, with which we close this Book, is, 
we believe, a testimony to the power of Christianity to fit a 
nation for conjoining freedom with law, to which no philo- 
sophic system can even pretend to adduce a parallel, which 
stands absolutely alone, in the annals of man : — 

" Fifty thousand men, accustomed to the profession of arms, 
were at once thrown on the world : and experience seemed to 
warrant the belief that this change would produce much mise- 
ry and crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen beg- 
ging in every street, or would be driven by hunger to pillage. 
But no such result followed. In a few months there remained 
not a trace indicating that the most formidable army in the 
world had been absorbed into the mass of the community. 
The royalists themselves confessed that, in every department 
of honest industry, the discarded warrior prospered beyond 
other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, 
that none was hearxi to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a 
mason, or a wagoner, attracted notice by his diligence and so- 
briety, he was in all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers." 



BOOK T¥0. 



CHRISTIANITY THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUAL 
CHAEACTEE. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY : A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 

" Those," says Mackintosh, "• who are early accustomed to 
dispute first principles, are never likely to acquire in a suffi- 
cient degree that earnestness and that sincerity, that strong 
love of truth and that conscientious solicitude for the formation 
of just opinions, which are not the least virtues of men, but of 
which the cultivation is the more especial duty of all who call 
themselves philosophers." This is a weighty remark ; not, 
perhaps, singularly recondite, but, beacon-like, giving warning 
of much, and peculiarly applicable to the present time. Be- 
hind us now we see a long roll of ages ; as we look backward 
over the path of mankind, we discern opinions of all sorts 
maintained by men of all orders of talent; from belief in 
transubstantiation to belief in nothing, all beliefs have had 
their able advocates. This prospect can not again be darkened, 
this fact can no longer be disguised : while newspapers, and 
mechanic institutes, and even ragged schools exist, men will 
know that the mode of their parish, of their country, of their 
generation, is not the only conceivable mode. Even the body 



292 A FEW WORDS O^ MODERN DOUBT. 

of the people can not again, save by an iron despotism, be 
brought to any such state as subsisted in ages long gone by. 
It is therefore nothing wonderful, that a common phenomenon 
Df the day is doubt. 

In considering the aspects of the time, one can not fail to be 
struck with the singular spectacles which arise out of this 
characteristic. We have been forcibly reminded, in reflecting 
on certain of these, of a certain Arabian tale. We find there 
recorded the fate of a vessel, whose pilot unfortunately steered 
her into the too close vicinity of a magnetic mountain. The 
nails were all attracted, the planks fell asunder, and total 
v/reck ensued. It is no uncommon thing at present, to see a 
man sailing in the vessel of his belief and appearing to do well 
enough. But he nears some new system of philosophic or 
theological thought, or comes within the influence of some man 
of overwhelming powers. This is the magnetic mountain. It 
at once draws out the connecting and riveting points of his 
faith, and his whole ship, himself sprawling among the severed 
timbers, lies scattered wide on the tossing sea. But he man- 
ages to gather together the floating wreck, he repairs his be- 
lief, and again sets sail : Lo ! another magnetic mountain ; the 
nails are again flying ; again he lies discomfited among waves 
and mere confused planks. His courage does not quite fail, 
however ; yet again he gets piece to piece, and, under a new 
phase, once more sets forth : and so it proceeds, mountain after 
mountain, and phase after phase, the whole voyage being taken 
up either in refitting, or in proclaiming that now at last a 
balmy and salubrious region has been entered, that all ships 
ought to sail on this tack, and that the last magnetic mountain 
(the head of the next just becoming visible in the horizon) is 
positively the last in this world. 

Now we think it can not be denied that there is an unwonted 



A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 293 

amount of intellectual foppishness at present extant ; the old 
Byronic fop, ^Yho sneered with the precise sneer supposed to 
cMrl the lip of the Childe, and looked as if his friends ought to 
keep the knives well out of his way, has given place to the 
Carlylian dapperling. This one " looks under the show of 
things," finds the age. hopelessly decadent, deals out critical 
damnation on every wTiter of the day save Carlyle and Thack- 
eray, and wishes his " great soul " had taken form in some he- 
roic old age, when men really believed, and had sense enough 
left to worship heroes like him. Mr. Carlyle is unquestionably 
a mountain, but never did mountain bring forth so large a 
progeny of mice. 

True, however, as all this is, it were a fatal error to con- 
found with mere foppery the honest and earnest doubt which 
we meet with. Our time here demands a faithful valor be- 
yond that of chivalry. 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

There may, in our quiet domestic life, arise temptations to 
mental cowardice as severe as ever prompted a soldier to quit 
the field under some cloud of dust, or on some plausible pre- 
text : there may be suspicion and contempt to be encountered 
as biting as the cold steel, before which the clear eye scorned 
to flinch : there may be endearments as tender to be torn 
asunder in the struggle toward internal freedom and truth, as 
ever drew a manly tear from the strong knight who bade 
adieu to his lady-love on his way to Palestine. There may be 
a deliberate abandonment, for the sake of a pure conscience, 
and to preserve an unpolluted mental atmosphere, of respect 
long accorded, of esteem for kindness and faithfulness of heart, 
or deference, perhaps still dearer, to power of intellect, of sym- 



294 A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 

pathetic jo} s from truth shared and loved m common, of hopes 
and expectations whose extinguishing looks like quenching the 
last fire in a cold wintery day. And, we say, this deliberate 
laying of the joys of earth on the altar of truth and conscience, 
may cause severer pangs than were ever felt by the true war- 
rior, who would still march on though his companions fell stiff 
by the wayside, or continue to face the foe when he stood on 
ground slippery with the blood that was dear to him. The 
loneliness one feels when afar from the habitations of men, on 
the ocean or in the desert, is, we are assured, but a faint em- 
blem of that dread feeling of sad and ghastly solitude which 
many a noble soul has experienced, when compelled by bests 
inaudible to his fellow-men, to pass forth alone into new re- 
gions of thought and belief The former solitude was but rel- 
ative, and scarcely real : the hearts that loved him might be 
distant, but in his hand were invisible threads of gold which 
linked theai still to his ; the smiles of welcome were waiting 
at the door of home, the accents of kindness, tremulous through 
excess of joy, would ring clear whenever his foot was heard on 
the threshold ; nay, by a thousand acts of nature's gentle magic, 
memory and imagination could make those smiles and accents 
present, to soothe his toil with encouragement, and fill with 
music the hot air around him : but here those golden chains 
themselves had been strained or riven, those smiles themselves 
had faded ; instead of a few miles of earth, there had yawned 
between him and the best riches of his heart an impassable 
chasm, and for consolation he could have no thought of an 
earthly home, but must listen only to the voice within, or look 
up to a Father who was in heaven. 

" Feebly must they have felt 
"Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips 
The revengeful Furies. Beautiful regards 



A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 295 

"Were t irn'd on me — the face of her I loved. 
The Wife and Mother pitifully fixing 
Tender reproaches, insupportable !" 

Such thoughts should make men at once careful and le- 
nient in judging of those who differ from them and the ma- ^ * 
jority, and especially it should avert all asperity from the A 
mode of dealing with young men, who have been led to doubt, 
it may be through earnestness, and who have struggled to re- 
tain their footing, it may be almost in despair. 

We are not now to enter on any discussion of this wide sub- 
ject : we present merely one or two preliminary but we think 
vitally important considerations. 

First of all, let it be fully and boldly admitted, what doubt 
really is and occasions ; we mean in its bearing upon life and 
action. Blanco Whites and John Sterlings may be admirable 
and may deserve commendation in many ways, or they may 
not ; but, if such are to be taken as specimens of widely-ex- 
tended classes, if men are more and more to resemble these, 
it is at least plain that work is no longer to be got done in 
this world. If our modern enlightenment is merely to pro- 
duce a vast swarm of doubters, if every year and decade, with 
its harvest of systems and proposals, furnishes simply an ad- 
dition of labor to the poor man of next generation, who would 
attain stable belief, our outlook for the future is somewhat 
startling ; it is perfectly manifest, that the children of the He- 
brews, the Romans, and the Puritans, must become moon- 
struck gazers rather than faithful workers, that the words of 
the poet must reach a positive and ghastly fulfillment, and 
Earth become the Bedlam of the universe. 

But next, and summarily, we lay it down as an axiom, that 
even this consideration must not be used as an argument that 
doubt should be stifled, and falsehood or partial falsehood, 



296 A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 

either real or suspected, contentedly aecepted in its stead. 
Sad as the above spectacle may be, we must courageously be- 
hold it ; the searching, struggling, groping attitude is not de- 
feat, but the best proof of worthiness of victory ; the eye in 
which is doubt will swim irresolute, the arm of the doubter 
will hang powerless, but it is Only the calmness of truth 
that must steady the one, and the energy of truth that must 
nerve the other ; falsehood is perfect blindness and perfect 
death. 

If we might venture on a suggestion as to a speedy method 
of reaching a firm and stable position, and putting an end, 
either in one way or another to this paralyzing and afflicting 
doubt, it would be to this effect : That attention should be 
turned specially in two directions ; to determine the great fun- 
damental points of belief, and to distinguish between what are 
mere difficulties and what are positive proofs or disproofs. It 
has often been remarked how near to each other in their orig- 
inal fountains are the streams of belief; like rivers, whose 
sources are seen by one poised condor on the topmost ridge 
of the Andes, and whose mouths are divided by a continent. 
Thus philosophic faith and philosophic skepticism, wide apart 
as flow their respective streams, yet enter their several chan- 
nels according to the answer, affirmative or negative, given to 
the simple question, Can the human consciousness be trusted 1 
And there are not a few such determining questions^ whose 
answer may at the outset confirm religious belief, or sum- 
marily dismiss it ; of such sort the following appear to us to 
be : — Whether, on the whole, the phenomenon presented by 
Paul can be accounted for, save on the hypothesis of the su- 
pernatural origin of Christianity ? Whether, fairly applied to, 
history can take us to Judea and set us among the auditors of 
Christ, and whether, then, He can be deliberately pronounced 



A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 297 

a deceiver or deceived ? Whether all the religions of men 
have been mere pitiable delusions, or are to be accounted for 
as pointing toward one true religion and doing it honor, as 
bending, unconsciously, indeed, and as if with the vague uncer- 
tain motions of a dream, yet manifestly bending, around its 
greater light ? Whether human history can furnish a precise 
or approximate analogue to the combination of New Testament 
morality and New Testament assertion of the exercise of su- 
pernatural power, on the hypothesis that the one is a hypo- 
critic disguise and the other a pestilent lie, or that the one is 
the maundering of weakness and the other the dream of fanati- 
cism'? 

Such questions could be indefinitely multiplied, and many 
might be found far better adapted to the end than these. 
Such have the advantage of bringing the matter to a speedy 
issue. Be their answer positive or negative, the power of 
doubt to fetter action is broken ; all succeeding questions are 
of secondary moment. And it will commend itself, as a rea- 
sonable and manly mode of procedure, that when once such 
definite answer has been given, minor questions be placed in 
the rank of mere difficulties, able no longer to touch the 
citadel of the soul. If I can believe that the Saviour willfully 
deceived his disciples, the serenity of my unbelief will be 
troubled by no difficulty, serious as in itself it might be, in 
accounting for the Sermon on the Mount. If I believe that 
Jesus raised the dead in Palestine, I will feel that my foot is 
on a rock, around which I can behold a shattering universe 
unmoved, and from which I can calmly look until all shadoTv's 
vanish, and every cloud of difficulty, looked upon by the morn- 
ing light, rest radiant in a serene sky, visible only by its power 
to absorb the sunbeams. 

And there is one point never to be forgotten ; that, beneath 
13* 



298 A. FEW "WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 

all doubt there mus.; in every case continue to lie a certain 
immovable and unquestioned foundation, or all is lost. There 
are two perils, each of fatal tendency, which beset the youthful 
inquirer on the way to truth ; perils against which it is no pre- 
judging of the case on our part to warn him, since they affect, 
not the attainment of any positive creed, or modification of a 
creed, but the very ability and will to search for such, the 
very life of the soul. 

The first peril, thus absolutely ruinous in its action, is that 
of sensuality ; we are assured it is real and fearful. The 
young man has long ago left the kindly shore of his early be- 
lief, it may be the genial smile of his native home, and em- 
barked on a wild and apparently endless voyage. The sky 
seems ever to grow blacker, the surges more wrathful, the 
hov/1 of the bitter blast more melancholy and foreboding ; he 
set out to reach the Happy Isles, full of noble hope and lofty 
aspiration ; but never has he at all approached them ; never, 
through the darkness and tempest, was seen the calm gleam 
of their resting haven, the welcoming smile of their unfading 
gardens; and now his heart sickens in his breast, with un 
solaced yearning, with hope long deferred, in the scowl of that 
black negation which seems to press down on him from the 
whole starless sky : then there steals over the ocean a sweet, 
a witching melody, and he sees a soft light through the storm 
in the distance, streaming gently as from a dwelling of perfect 
peace ; lifting his eyes, he beholds the Syren songstress, with 
alluring smile, sitting at the door of her enchanted cave, bar- 
ing her voluptuous bosom, offering the spiced and mantling 
draught. Here, at least, is certainty. For the excitement of 
passion will be exchanged the misery cf disappointing thought, 
for the living raptures of pleasure, the unsubstantial and hard- 
won joys of truth. Why in toil and anguish seek an inherit- 



A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 299 

ance for the soul 1 Why look out into immensity, forward to 
eternity 1 We are on the earth, why not be altogether of 
the earth ? Much may deceive, but passion at least is real. 
The temptation is strong, and, we fear, often prevailing ; and 
when it does prevail, it can be only by a convulsive effort that 
the life of the soul is saved. For here there could be no 
doubt as to the meaning of the temptress ; the invitation was 
clear and unmistakable : Turn from spirit to sense, leave faith 
for sight, bow down at the shrine of Belial, curse God and die 
to all nobleness. While the mental atmosphere is pure, while 
the darkness is only without, while the " red lightnings of re. 
morse" do not flash within, and self-contempt is not added to 
that of others, there is good hope that the haven of a believing 
working manhood may be gained ; but from the rocks of the 
Syrens who ever returned '? 

The second peril is not the surrender to sensualism, but is 
perhaps still more desperate ; the abandonment of earnestness, 
the lapse into a harmless but purposeless skepticism. Concern- 
ing much a man may question, but of this he must not enter- 
tain any doubt ; that the universe is not a dream, a phantas- 
magoria, an aimless, incomprehensible nothing, but a reality. 
He shall always believe that, whatever his uncertainty, truth 
is immovable and immortal. There is thus a refuge for faith 
in the wildest discord of doubt ; and the very inability of the 
earnest mind to reach a definite and particular belief may ren- 
der the more emphatic and even heroic an unwavering con- 
fidence in the existence of truth, in the verity of Gc i. 

" Oil yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood: 



300 A FEW WORDS O i:i MODERK DOUBT. 

"That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That net one life shall be destroy'd, 
Or east as rubbish to the void, 
"When God hath made the pile complete ; 

"That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, 
Or but subserves another's gain." 

Once this faith is lost ; once a man comes to question 
whether there is an earnest purpose in this universe at all ; 
when it is no longer of his own path or his own powers of 
navigation that he doubts, of the very existence of a celestial 
vault above those clouds, with its immovable lights burning 
round the throne of God ; then he is in an evil case. Here, 
too, he finds rest ; but it is only a degree nobler than the rest 
of sensualism ; it is the rest of an easy, careless, blunt indiffer- 
ence, an acceptation of the good things of the day, a consent 
not to push sternly forward in an undeviating path, but lightly 
and laughingly to " gyrate," like M. Maurepas. Is it uncom- 
mon, either in literature or in society, to observe the working 
of such a spirit as this 1 Does there not subsist in our age a 
certain skepticism, good-humored from its very completeness, 
and extremely clever and gentlemany, which would laughingly- 
aim its darts at the very heart of truth ? All loftiness of 
emotion, all earnest prizing of spiritual belief, is genially ban- 
tered aside. Truth may be very good, but its pursuit is so 
tantalizing ; one gets on to satisfaction without troubling him- 
self about profound faith ; intensity of feeling is a sign of 
youth, or affectation, or feeble enthusiasm ; the nil admirari 
mood, the abnegation of all reverence and wonder, befits the 
smart member of polite society ; honesty consists in making 
no pretense to earnestness. And then wit survives ; on every 



A FEW WORDS ON MODERN DOUBT. 301 

thing there can be hung a jest ; from the star to the grass 
blade, all things can be covered with the flickering light of 
clever and kindly banter. It is by no means unpleasant to 
meet a disciple of this school ; he is sure to be witty, cheery, 
sparkling, devoid of all pretense, blithe as a canary. No less 
exhilarating is the same spirit when breathed from the page of 
literature. Sydney Smith was perhaps its most signal embodi- 
ment ; allied with genius still more rare and delicate, we are 
sensible of its subtle enchantment in the softly glowing para- 
graphs of Eothen. Yet this whole phenomenon is one of un- 
questionable sadness ; perhaps few things could be more melan- 
choly. Fichte and Carljle proclaim rightly that there is a 
grandeur in noble sorrow ; it is ill with him who is incapable 
of spiritual anguish, even of lofty despair. That very pain is, 
we repeat, a proof of devotion to truth ; as the keenness of 
the slighted lover's distress tests the depth of his affection. 
Better bow before a vailed Isis than care not whether the Di- 
vine can be known at all ! This is the second peril, and many 
are there in our day, whose best existence, whose soul's life, 
is by it put in jeopardy. 

But for him who doubts sincerely, and will nowise fail from 
his faith in truth itself, there may be ordained the breaking 
forth of a great glory of deliverance and of dawn. True it is, 
his doubt is to be hated, and he can never fairly take the road un- 
til it is no more. But the brightness of the morning may be 
proportioned to the length and the darkness of the night. The 
overwearied dove long winged its aimless way, over an earth 
that was but one wide waste of waters, under a streaminfj and 
darkened sky ; and now its tired pinions flapped heavily, the 
heart within had almost failed, the last ray of hope was fliding 
from the eye ; but even then the olive twig emerged, and from 
a rift in the thick cloud a beam of light fell on the fainting 



302 A FEW WORDS ON M BERN DOUBT. 

breast, and gradually the earth again unvailed her face, and the 
triumphant embrace of the returning light kindled a glory 
which eclipsed all other dawns. Need we apply the parable 1 



In the following chapters of this Book, we shall, amid much 
else, have occasion to note several of the phases of Modern 
Doubt, and to observe whether and how the Christian life can 
spring amid it, triumph over it, or stand unassailed by it. 



CHAPTER II. 



.TOH^* FOSTER. 



John Foster, peasant in the west of Yorkshire, and father 
of the subject of these paragraphs, was one of those undoubt- 
ing Christians, whose lives, unnoticed bv the world and uncon- 
sciously to themselves, are yet faithful transcripts from apos- 
tolic or patriarchal times. He no more questioned the stabil- 
ity of that path on which he went toward eternity, than he 
questioned the firmness of the ground along which, with solid 
measured tread, he walked to his daily toil. For twenty 
years before his death, he prayed, every year, that God, if it 
seemed good to Him, would terminate his earthly career. 
And this strength of character was finely shaded by a tenden- 
cy toward reflection, a love of meditation and retirement. 
There was a lonely spot on the banks of the river Hebden, 
whither he used to retire in meditative hours, and which be- 
came known as Foster's cave. His wife Ann was the fitting 
spouse of such a husband. Her piety was of the same order 
IS liis ; her decision *still more conspicuous. One day, before 
their marriage, Mr. Foster happened, in her presence, to be in 
a desponding mood. " I can not," he said, '• keep a wife-'' — 
'•Then I will work and keep my husband," rejoined Ann. 
Prudence would join with love in recommending such a 
union. 

On the 17lh of September, 1770, theii- son John was bom. 



304 JOHN FOSTER. 

It soon became evident that the child inherited, more or 
less, the disposition of either parent. He was a quiet, retiring 
boy, who loved to separate himself from the boisterous circle 
of youthful nairth, and commune with his own heart alone; 
his sympathies were not diffusive, his likings were few, we 
hear but of one friend of his own age ; he lacked the glad 
buoyancy of early youth, and soon learned to wander musing 
by the brook side, or in the lonely wood. In this we recog- 
nize the son of that John Foster who used to meditate and to 
pray in the cave beside the murmuring Hebden. He was, 
however, nowise destitute of acute feelings or strong energies ; 
here he took after his other parent. When he did love or 
hate, he did either well. 

But it soon became manifest that he possessed elements of 
character distinctively his own. He was not merely shy and 
silent, heedless of boyish sports ; he was not only an observ- 
ant, sagacious, precociously wise, and as neighbors said, " old- 
fashioned" little man : he was conscious, besides, of feelings 
with which no sympathy was to be expected from any one, of 
pensive yearnings, and half-defined longings, which shut him 
by the barrier of a strong individuality from the throng. His 
sensibilities — we mean his unselfish and kindly sensibilities — 
were tender to a degree very rare in boyhood ; he " abhorred 
spiders for killing flies, and abominated butchers ;" his imag- 
ination tyrannized over him, painting to his eye the scene of 
torture, or the skeleton, or the apparition; until he shrunk in 
loathing and terror from their ghastly distinctness. This deli- 
cate sensibility, manifesting itself in a fellow-feeling with every 
being that did or could suffer pain, and this eye-to-eye clear- 
ness of imaginative vision, were determining elements in his 
"leveloped character. 

He waa about fourteen years of age^ when he heard what we 



JOHN FOSTER. 305 

must regard as the first direct monition from Heaven., the first 
call to pause and consider. About that time, he ventured so 
far to unbosom himself to his friend Henry Horsfall, as to let 
him know that the peace of his heart had been disturbed, and 
that it was only by taking to himself as a garment the robe of 
Christ's righteousness, that he could regain calmness of mind. 
This was unquestionably the turning-point of his life, the oc- 
casion of his first and irrevocably determining to enlist in the 
army of light. A long period elapsed ere his whole system of 
belief evolved itself, and many a change passed over his spirit 
before he finally reached a station in which he could calmly feel 
and act, unshackled by fear and unshaken by doubt ; but he 
had taken the step of separation, he had lifted his eye from 
earth to heaven, and whatever change — of circumstance, of 
opinion, of feeling — may afterward have taken place — however 
he may have doubted, whithersoever he may have wandered — 
we can firmly say, that this direction was never altered. 

When he attained his seventeenth year, he became a mem- 
ber of the Baptist congregation at Hebden Bridge, and about 
the same time resolved to dedicate himself to the Christian 
ministry. For three years, he devoted himself to theological 
and general study in Brearley Hall, an educational institute in 
the neighborhood. While here, he continued, as in his early 
boyhood, to lend his parents occasional assistance in their 
labors at the loom. 

He now applied himself to the acquisition of knowledge 
with intense earnestness. For whole nights he read and med- 
itated, choosing as his retreat on such occasions a grove in Dr. 
Fawcett's garden. His mind was tardy in its operations. 
He performed his scholastic exercises with extreme slowness. 
But his eflTorts were unremitting and determined ; and we 
doubt not it was here that he acquired much of that extensive, 



306 JOHN FOSTER. 

though somewhat miscellaneous information, of which his 
works give ample evidence. Here, too, he was enabled to in- 
dulge his love of the various aspects of nature. It was his re- 
creation to ramble in the neighboring glens and woodlands. 
On one occasion he wandered for a whole night with a friend 
under the open sky, that he might note the varying features 
of twilight, of darkness, and especially of dawn. He displayed 
at an early period, what he continued to evince through life, a 
deep and genuine love of nature. In early days it led him to 
wander in solitary ways, while other boys were at sport, and 
in after years it caused him to speak of those unacquainted 
with the sympathetic emotions of a deep affection for nature 
as seeming to want a sense. He loved every aspect of sky 
and earth, but the naturally serious cast of his mind was 
e\dnced by his preference of the great and gloomy. The 
glories of the moon streaming over the forest and showing the 
dim crag with its giant shadow in the slumbering lake, the 
slow march of the laden clouds across the sky, the cleft cloud, 
whose jagged edges were fringed with white fire, and from 
whose caverns issued the laugh of the thunder ; — these fitted 
best his somber yet vivid imagination, and yielded him the 
pleasure of a stern enchantment. But he had also a look of 
sympathy and love for more delicate and minute beauties. 
He would watch lovingly the kindling smile of nature as 
Spring awoke and opened the gates of Summer; he heard with 
a thrill of joy the note of the bird, and often speaks of the sky- 
people, the inhabitants of the summer sunbeams, that were 
such favorites with Richter. Yet Foster's love of nature was 
perhaps never the passionate love of the poet, and the flow 
and freshness of its early manifestations were soon impaired 
by a habit of schooled and conscious observation. He exer- 
cised a careful supervision over his thoughts and impressions, 



JOHN FOSTER. 



307 



striving to subject all the operations o: his intellect to a " mili- 
tary discipline." He learned to observe nature with a certain 
constrained accuracy, to jot down his various impressions of 
her beauty, to gather analogies, similes, and so on : by which 
method, it appears, coy nature will not be known. Foster 
was in all things too self-conscious. He would have the flower 
up to see how its roots were thriving, he would lay out his 
mind like a Dutch garden, all trimmed, and squared, and or- 
dered. This is an important element in his character. It im- 
peded that easy natural flow of thought and diction, it dulled 
that sportive buoyancy of soul, which indicate, as they spring 
from, an energy working much by spontaneity and impulse, 
a knowledge that has been naturally matured, and is ever kept 
fresh and verdant. We meet in his works with glimpses of 
insight into the vast region of our unconscious influences ; but 
he seems to have considered it his duty to order every move- 
ment of his own mind with an algebraic exactness ; he never 
fairly embraced and submitted to the beautiful and important 
truth, that the noblest education is that of sympathy, when, 
with viewless hand, she throws open the gates of the soul, 
that the forms of beauty and the light of truth may silently 
enter in. 

We have already noted the acuteness of Foster's sensibili- 
ties : we must say another word on the subject ere passing on. 
In no way is he more frequently or dogmatically characterized 
than by the word misanthrope. This word, we maintain, is an 
absolute misapplication. We are confident we can prove that, 
from his earliest to his latest years, his heart was tenderly, 
delicately kind. His sensibilities were not less, but more 
acute than those of his fellow-men. 

At first glance he appeared cold. It was natural that he 
should ; the circumstances of his boyhood, and perhaps a con- 



308 JOHN FOSTER. 

stitutional tendency, determined it so. He had no very early 

associates : his parents were far advanced in life, and did nothing 
to encourage the healthful sprightliness of chilhood ; his brother 
Thomas was too much younger than himself to be his play- 
mate ; he had no sister. The consequence w^as, that he grew 
up externally cold and self-involved. On his sedate and pen- 
sive countenance there was not that look of vivacious geniality, 
that flower-like smiling, which is nature's appointed expression 
and emblem of kindness of heart. He possessed no advan- 
tages of face and form, nor had he that nameless power to 
attract and please which make some persons universal 
favorites. 

Yet we are assured that all this is not inconsistent with the 
fact that he was naturally one of the most truly lovable of 
human beings ; noble, gentle, tenderly affectionate. His na- 
ture, in its depths, had a far truer and deeper tenderness than 
that of thousands of genial, ever-smiling, companionable boys 
and girls. Our proof of this is twofold : first, we have direct 
manifestations of delicate sensibility ; and, next, we find this 
deep kindness necessary to solve, and absolutely sufficient for 
the solution of, several remarkably prominent leanings and 
opinions of Foster. 

Among the direct manifestations of genuine and tender kind- 
ness, we place his acute feeling of the sufferings borne by the 
lower animals ; and we deem this an infallible pledge of kind- 
ness of heart. In his case, it was a deep, constant, and consid- 
erate feeling. We point also, as of itself sufficient to establish 
our view, to that sense of a void in his heart, to be filled only 
by a loved and loving object, which breathes in his early let- 
ters. He yearned with intense desire for some fully sympa- 
thizing heart. " Cold as you pronounce me," he exclaims, in 
an early letter, " I should prefer the deep animated affection of 



JOHN FOSTER. 309 

one person whom I could entirely love, to all the tribute fame 
could levy within the amplest circuit of her flight." Again : — 
" Something seems to say, Come, come away, I am but a 
gloomy ghost among the living and the happy. There is no 
need of me ; I shall never be loved as I wish to be loved, 
and as I could love. ... I c^n never become deeply im- 
portant to any one ; and the unsuccessful eflbrt to become so 
costs too much, in the painful sentiments which the affections 
feel when they return mortified from the fervent attempt to 
give themselves to some heart which would welcome them 
with a pathetic warmth." These are the accents of a really 
tender, as well as noble nature ; of one which found no joy in 
isolation, although met by disappointment in the throng. Fos- 
ter was not recognized by men in general to be kind ; but none 
ever came into close converse with him who did not know it 
well : there were deep and pure fountains of tenderness in his 
heart, but far secluded from the general gaze. There are wells 
among the calcined ridges of the Abyssinian deserts, known 
only to the wild gazelle, and for which even the wandering 
Arabs seek in vain for ages. Many a man there is who is 
deemed hard and ungenial, merely because his kindness is hid- 
den deep and can not be approached by ordinary paths. Fur- 
ther and conclusive proofs of Foster's deep kindliness of nature 
will unfold themselves as we proceed. 

At the age of twenty-one, he left Brearley and entered the 
Baptist College in Bristol. His application here must have 
been fitful. " Probably," he says, writing to a friend in York- 
shire, " there never was a more indolent student at this or any 
other academy. I know but very little more of learning, or 
any thing else, than when I left you. I have been a trifler all 
my life to this hour." But his mind was advancing. His let- 
ters testify to strong moral earnestness, to a stern and manly 



310 JOHN FOSTER. 

ED-bition, and to a ripening soundness of judgment. His eye 
was ever upward. 

He left the Bristol seminary ere he completed his twenty- 
second year. His education, which, so far as school and col- 
lege were concerned, was now completed, must be pronounced 
defective. A general idea of the classics he had, but nothing 
more ; his memory seemed not to have been trained by any 
systematic discipline, and though by no means singularly bad, 
was yet a cause of complaint to him through life ; his reason- 
ing powers do not appear to have been matured by any course 
of scientific or metaphysical study, and all his works bear wit- 
ness to the fact. By miscellaneous reading, however, he had 
gained a large, though heterogeneous, stock of knowledge ; his 
intellect, while certainly giving no clear promise that it would 
ever be of that embracing kind which casts its generalizing 
glance over vast tracts of history, or science, or philosophy, 
had yet proved itself possessed of great natural vigor and 
shrewdness ; beneath all, the substratum of his whole mind, 
lay a radical honesty, a penetrating sense of reality. This last 
armed him with an almost irresistible power to pierce disguises 
and burn up moral and social cobweb and filagree. 

Such, in meager outline, were the boyhood and youth of 
Foster. We have seen him under the influences of the home 
and the school. We now arrive at that portion of his history 
which is in every case critical. We have to observe him as 
> ^q3*^® emerges from the quite^egion, and the still though power- 
'^ ful influences which have hitherto molded his character, and 

enters a wider and more perilous sphere. The kindly words 
and glances of a godly father and mother, the friendly admo- 
nitions of Christian instructors, must give place to the rude 
teaching of experience. Till now, he has been gently and ge- 
nially swayed by influences exterior to himself; he has gone on 



JOHNFOSTER. 311 

in peace and trustfulness, unconsciously leaning on the thought 
and knowledge of others ; not to any measure of excess, but 
rightly and blissfully, he has hitherto imbibed the impressions 
of his circle, and been what it is seemly for a boy and a youth 
to be, who has been planted by God in a Christian family and 
a Christian land. But now his instructors are to be the many 
voices of contemporaneous life; his keen and susceptible mind 
is to be brought into contact with the agencies that ever work 
in the great world, shaping out the future ; he is to know what 
men in their various grades and nations are doing and saying, 
that he may manfully determine how it is his duty to speak 
and to act. He is to make his opinions his own, by taking 
them down for a time from those niches in his mind where the 
hand of a parent or instructor had placed them, subjecting 
them to a careful and earnest scrutiny, and either replacing 
them, or casting them away, by the free yet resolute hand of 
individual will. He is to know the agony of doubt. He is 
to be flung from youth's pinnacles of hope, till he almost dis- 
cerns in the distance the dim Lethe of despair. He is, so to 
speak, to serve his apprenticeship to the time, to be made ac- 
quainted with its wants, its sicknesses, its conditions, its weap- 
ons, that at length he may step forth a skillful and well-approved 
"workman, knowing what it is foolish or boyish to attempt, what 
it is imbecile or cowardly to shun. 

For the accomplishment of this high object, a period of ten 
years will not be too long. We shall take a broad glance 
along it, specifying a few of its more prominent influences, 
and endeavoring, in his own words, to trace his progress 
through it. 

It will be necessary for us in the outset to ask what were 
the great public influences of the time : the question can be 
briefly answered. 



312 JOHN FOSTER. 

We have already had occasion to refer to the French Revo- 
lution. It is unnecessary to do more now than to note the 
extent of its influence. Every vein and artery of the social 
system, and that in all lands, felt that tremendous throb at the 
heart of the world. Thrones, senates, churches felt it ; nay, 
to pursue the metaphor, we might say that every smallest 
capillary to which blood could circulate was affected, every 
unobserved assemblage where eyes caught light from answer- 
ing glances, every college coterie, every family circle. There 
was not a noble young heart in Britain but beat more quickly 
at the great tidings, and almost universally it was the beating 
of exultant sympathy. The revolutionary fire went burning 
and blasting, and the eyes of the young kindled into joy and 
hope. " It is," such was the universal shout, " the breaking 
of the dawn ; the mists are retiring before it ; nothing but 
mist is dissipated ; presently the wide landscape, in a glory 
and beauty as of calm and bounteous summer, will spread 
away to our dazzled eyes toward the horizon of the future." 
They did not reflect that the path of fire is over a soil left 
blackened and sterile, where only the charred skeletons of the 
once proud forest remain, and that long years revolve ere 
nature kindly mantles it in green. Those were the days when 
Coleridge and Southey were building, of cloud and moonbeam, 
their notable fabric of pantisocracy, the government of all by 
all ; where everij man, as Louis Blanc promised, would keep 
his carriage. James Montgomery, in those days, found him- 
self a dangerous person, and was immured in a prison. 
Wordsworth looked dark and dangerous. It was a strange 
and tumultuous time. The great era of doubting had finally 
come. All things were subjected to a trial as of fire, and an- 
tiquity seemed only to make them burn better. 

Foster was deeply affected by the great changes taking 



A 



JOHN FOSTER. ~ 313 

place. Both politically and religiously, his opinions became 
unsettled — we might almost say, wild ; while the turmoil and 
confusion in his mind were greatly aggravated hy individual 
characteristics. For far different questions presented them- 
selves to his mind than troubled other democrats. He pon- 
dered deeply on the human tale, and the unfathomable dealings 
of God with man. That insatiable yearning, which has marked 
the noblest minds, to penetrate the gloom that surrounds the 
destiny of man, to call a voice from the silence in which we 
thread our way through immensity ; that sublime want and 
disease which points to the state which is man's health, and 
the place which is man's home, was a prominent and life-long 
characteristic of Foster. At first his ideas on these matters 
were confused, tumultuous, and wrapped in deepest gloom ; 
for a time, a ray as of dawning light seemed to fall on them, 
and he was joyous and full of hope ; then this again proved 
itself an earthly meteor, and no true herald of day ; finally 
the gloom again fell in thick shadows, but in his own hand was 
a lamp which made him at least secure and calm. 

" At some moments," he says, " life, the world, mankind, ♦ J^ ' 

religion, and eternity, appear to me like one vast scene of tre- ^^'*^'^ 
mendous confusion, stretching before me far away, and closed '^^;^y'''^-'^< 
in shades of the most dreadful darkness — a darkness which 
only the most powerful splendors of Deity can illumine, and 
which appears as if they never yet had illumined it." 

Such causes of internal unrest complicated greatly the diffi- 
culties with which Foster had to contend. As yet the light 
af religion shed no definite radiance. He had not settled for 
himself the old question put to us so emphatically in our 
time, " What think ye of Christ — whose son is He f He was 
not absolutely sure whether He was the son of God, or only 
the supreme of finite beings. He looked eagerly in a direo 

14 



314 JOHN FOSTER. 

tion different from that where rested, calm amid all tempests, 
the banner of the Prince of Peace. He turned for a time to 
Thomas Paine. The first rude accents of universal freedom, 
which, rude as they were, we yet respect, caught his ear ; he 
spoke of the " rights of men," and " all that, and all that." 
Nay, with a smile of amazement we see the gentle, pensive, 
musing Foster in Dublin, hand in glove with a crew of fiery 
democratic Irishmen, calling himself a "son of Brutus !" 

The aspect, indeed, of this whole period of Foster's history 
is that of distraction and disquiet. There is a want of settled 
determination, of deliberate working energy, of manlike fix- 
edness of aim. We can mark in his active life the alternation 
of spasmodic effort, with too great relaxation of mind ; and 
what remain to us of his writings bear a similar testimony. 
We meet with flashes of strong discernment in thought, and 
striking brilliancy in expression ; of indications of genius there 
is no lack ; but we ever feel that this, as he tells us he was 
himself conscious, is not his rest. One thing, however, is 
always beyond doubt, and it is of a nature to impart to all 
deviations and distractions a deep value and interest. Through 
his whole life and thinking there burns the fire of an inde- 
structible ardor in the search for truth, and a determination, 
come what may, to put up with no counterfeit ; sacred and 
unquenchable, we see this glowing in his letters and stray 
sentences, a vailed radiance but of heavenly brightness. Was 
not this the light that had been kindled in him when he un- 
bosomed his youthful sorrow to Henry Horsfall 1 

In early life, " before the age of twenty," he commenced the 
practice of jotting down observations and reflections ; of these 
he carefully copied out a copious selection, entitling them, "A 
Chinese Garden of Flowers and Weeds." It is a strange med- 
ley, of great interest, and strikingly illustrative of the vaiying 



JOHN FOSTER. 315 

mood of his mind. It abounds in passages of beauty and even 
of grandeur ; at intervals we meet an obser\ation on men and 
character somewhat severely true ; his strong tendency toward 
the mysterious, his deep devout earnestness, the excellences 
and the defects of his imagination, and his genuine though 
somewhat restrained and impaired love of nature, all reveal 
themselves. He longs for what he names " an extensive at- 
mosphere of consciousness," but which we should call rather a 
universal and tender sympathy, which, " like an Eolian harp," 
might " arrest even the vagrant winds and make them music." 
Of a calm and beautiful evening we hear him say, that it is as 
if the soul of Eloisa pervaded the air : the idea has always ap- 
peared to us delicately and extremely beautiful. He reads 
Milton, and pictures to himself his world of spirits. He peers 
earnestly into the deeps of the .olden eternity, and could even 
wish for death to snap the gravitation of earth : " I can not 
wonder," he says, " that this intense and sublime curiosity has 
sometimes demolished the corporeal prison, by flinging it 
from a precipice or into the sea." Then, it may be, his imagin- 
ation lapses into a wild and freakish mood : he figures himself, 
in great exultation, tossing on the waves of a flaming ocean, 
rising sky-high on the peaks of fire ; or, he looks on a file of 
clouds slowly and darkly trooping along the sky before the 
wind, his imagination transforming them into gaunt and sullen 
giants, that frown grimly to the soft smile of the interspersed 
azure. Presently, in milder and higher mood, he dreams of a 
visitant that comes to his earnest longings from the celestial 
choirs ; he walks in thought by his side, propounds to him the 
questions he has been gathering up for eternity, listens, in re- 
vering and wondering love, to every word in reply, and thinks 
that he has at last found his ideal friend and his satisfying in- 
formant. Soon he is again in the throng of common men and 



316 JOHN FOSTER. 

women making his half-cynical remarks : he gravely lets us 
know that, when he goes into company, he can see the ladies 
taking his measure, and thinking they have it, while he knows 
well enough they have not nor are capable of having ; some 
one speaks to him about a certain " narrow-minded religion- 
ist ;" " Mr. T.," he replies, " sees religion not as a sphere but 
as a line ; and it is the identical line in which he is moving ;" 
sometimes his satiric fancy takes a wider sweep, and fancying 
the sun an intelligence, he figures his rage and disappoint- 
naent at the miserable show the world turns out for him 
to light up, " a tiresome repetition of stupidity, follies, and 
crimes." 

Foster's life during this which we have called his transition 
period, was externally as well as internally full of vicissitude. 
He went from situation to situation, from England to Ireland, 
from Ireland to England, and from England to Ireland again, 
without finding a permanent resting-place. His preaching was 
nowhere acceptable with the mass of the people ; instead of 
being a center of attraction, he was decidedly a center of re- 
pulsion in the congregations where he ministered. He was 
really and deeply defective as a preacher. His manner was 
always, and exceedingly bad. We can not doubt, also, that a 
tendency to excessive refining made his sermons difficult to 
follow. The writer, over whose pages a reader can pore until 
he has analyzed every clause and paragraph, may trace what 
labyrinths he chooses to enter, may lead his readers by what 
thin silken thread or what faint taper-light he thinks fit ; but 
oratory of every sort, and none the less but perhaps rather the 
more pulpit oratory, demands the strongly -marked line of dis- 
tinction, the bold and massive argument, the clear broad gleam 
of light. Of this Foster was never fully conscious, or if con- 
scious of the fact and of his want, he yet failed to amend it. 



JOHN FOSTER. 317 

It might, too, "vre think, be affirmed that his tone of remark 
had, at times, an air somewhat unnatural and far-fetched ; not 
obvious certainly, but not perfectly natural, and we know that 
novelty and nature must unite to produce any sort of literary 
excellence. However it was, he was certainly unsuccessful as 
a preacher. He went from chapel to chapel in vain ; his deli- 
cacies vt ere rejected by the body of the people : they desired 
bread. There were generally a few who esteemed his teach- 
ing very highly. 

To trace his external career in all its changes during these 
ten years, is uncalled for. His general course of life can be 
easily conceived. He spent much time in musing. By the 
banks of the Tyne, and in the meadows about Newcastle, he 
might have been seen, pensive and thoughtful, his eye often 
abstracted, yet at times lit up with a glance of keenest scrutiny 
and shrewdness. At Chichester, where we find him a few 
years afterward, he used to pace the aisles of his chapel, in 
the silent moonlight, thinking earnestly, and it seems to have 
been in those still hours, that wider and calmer views touch- 
ing time and eternity, God and man, gradually opened up be- 
fore him. 

One or two extracts from his correspondence of this time 
will best illustrate his mental condition. 

" I sometimes fall into profound musings on the state of this 
great world, on the nature and the destinies of man, on the 
subject of the question, ' What is truth V The whole hemi- 
sphere of contemplation appears inexpressibly strange and 
mysterious. It is cloud pursuing cloud, forest after forest, and 
Alps upon Alps. It is vain to declaim against skepticism. I 
feel with an emphasis of conviction, and wonder, and regret, 
that almost all things are covered with thickest darkness, that 
the number of things to which certainty belongs is small. I 



318 JOHN FOSTER. 

hope to enjoy the sunshine of the other world. One of the 
very few things that appear to me not doubtful is the truth of 
Christianity in general." This passage we deem of great in- 
terest and importance. The earnest, religious Foster gazes 
forward and around ; in every direction he sees stretch- 
ing away the infinitude of wonder, in which floats our little 
world, and his eye falls only on thick tempestuous gloom ; he 
turns almost in despair from the clouded heaven, and longs 
for the sunlight of eternity. On one point he is assured : but 
it is not sufficient to give him rest and satisfaction. Christian- 
ity came from God : this he accepts as a general proposition. 
And while he doubts not of this, while he deliberately and im- 
movably believes that the Maker has broken silence in time, 
and spoken to the creature in Christianity, he is severed by an 
unfathomable gulf from every variety of mere philosophic 
morality, from all that can be called bare natural religion. 
Yet this is not enough to give him rest ; general beliefs never 
bring stable tranquillity. He knows that God has spoken : but 
can a reasonable being, so believing, rest while he has no defi- 
nite conviction of the import of what He has said '? 

There is progress indicated in the next, " Oh, what a diffi- 
cult thing it is to be a Christian ! I feel the necessity of re- 
form through all my soul. When I retire into thought, I find 
myself environed by a crowd of impressive and awful images ; 
I fix an ardent gaze on Christianity, assuredly the last best gift 
of Heaven to men ; on Jesus the agent and example of infinite 
love ; on time as it passes away ; on perfection as it shines 
beauteous as heaven, and, alas ! as remote ; on my own be- 
loved soul which I have injured, and on the unhappy multi- 
tude of souls around me ; and I ask myself. Why do not my 
passions burn ? Why does not zeal arise in mighty wrath to 
dash my icy habits in pieces, to scourge me from indolence 



JOHK FOSTER. 319 

into ievYsd exertion, and to trample all mean sentiments in the 
dust? At intervals I feel devotion and benevolence, and a 
surpassing ardor ; but when they are turned toward substan- 
tial, laborious operation, they fly and leave me spiritless amid 
the iron labor. Still, however, I do confide in the efficacy of 
persistive prayer ; and I do hope that the Spirit of the Lord 
will yet come mightily upon me, and carry me on through 
toils, and suffering, and death, to stand in Mount Zion among 
the followers of the Lamb !" 

As probably every man of high moral and intellectual en- 
dowment, Foster, in the first ardor and 23oetry of youth, had 
looked upon perfection as it shone beauteous as heaven ; he 
had felt profoundly and unaffectedly that the world is not 
dressed in those robes of purity and beauty in which it could 
possibly have come from the hand of an infinite God. He re- 
cognized the universal imperfection, and felt it most keenly in 
his own bosom. At times his heart would burn with an ardor 
that appeared unquenchable ; he seemed to shout for the bat- 
tle, and to rush out to confront the foe : but the world stood 
there in its armed and serried ranks, its thousand eyes looking 
stony defiance and inflexible hate ; he dropped his weapon and 
recoiled before the iron labor. But he has made progress. A 
general belief in Christianity has become an earnest personal 
straining of the eye toward Jesus ; though all on earth fail 
him, and though his own heart harbors traitors, yet is there 
an ever-living Spirit of the Lord, and His ear can be reached 
by a mortal by persistive prayer. 

" Every new reflection tells me that my evangelic determin- 
ations ought to be, and every hope flatters that they will be, 
irreversible. Assembling into one view all things in the 
world that are important, and should be dear, to mankind, I 
distinguish the Christian cause as the celestial soul of the as- 



320 JOHN FOSTER. 

semblage, evincing the same pre-eminence, and challenging 
the same emphatic passion which, in any other case, mind does 
beyond the inferior elements ; and I have no wish of equal en- 
ergy with that which aspires to the most intimate possible con- 
nection with Him who is the life of this cause, and the life of 
the world." 

Yet again, writing to his friend Hughes, he says : — " The 
Gospel is to me, not a matter of complacent speculation only, 
but of momentous use, of urgent necessity. I come to Jesus 
Christ because I need pardon, and purification, and strength. 
/feel more abased, as he appears more divine. In the dust I 
listen to his instructions and commands. 1 pray fervently in 
his name, and above all things for a happy union with him. I 
do, and will proclaim him. For his sake I am willing to go 
through evil report and good report. I wish to live and die 
in his service. Is not this some resemblance of ' the simplici- 
ty' of the fishermen, on which you insist with emphasis % 
This spirit, my dear friend, is in a certain degree, to be, I 
trust, divinely augmented — assuredly mine. The Galilean 
faith has gained the ascendant," etc. 

" The Galilean faith has gained the ascendant !" After all 
doubting and striving, this is the resting-place ; he sits lilce a 
child at the feet of Jesus. Silently as the sleep of returning 
health, there steals over the mind of Foster that peace which 
was the legacy of our Master. True, his contendings are not 
yet at an end, darkness and dismay at times seem still closing 
round him : but he now discerns his work, he now. sees the 
goal, he can now measure the enemy's force, and knows Who 
is fighting on his own side ; stern as he may feel his own con- 
test to be, mournfully slight as may be his impression on the 
ranks of the foe, he knows that, one good day, the battle will 
be won. 



JOHN FOSTER. 321 

His h.tellectual position lie thus defines : — " My opinions 
are in substance decidedly Calvinistic. I am firmly convinced, 
for instance, of the doctrines of original sin, predestination, im- 
puted righteousness, the necessity of the Holy Spirit's operar 
tion to convert the mind, final perseverance, etc., etc. As to 
the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, I do not deny that I had 
once some degree of doubt, but not such a degree ever as to 
carry me any thing near the adoption of an opposite or differ- 
ent opinion. It was by no means disbelief; it was rather a 
hesitation to decide, and without much, I think, of the vanity 
of speculation. But for a long while past I have fully felt the 
necessity of dismissing subtle speculations and distinctions, 
and of yielding a humble, cordial assent to the mysterious 
truth, just as and because the Scriptures declare it, without in- 
quiring, ' How can these things -be V " 

Thus had Foster arrived at that great epoch in a man's life, 
when he can feel with a good conscience that his work is found, 
and that, until his allotment of time is spent, he is delivered 
from the fickle and distempered sway of change. The period 
of this consummation was auspiciously marked by another of 
equally happy omen. He now at length met one whom he 
could entirely love, and who reciprocated the affection. 

A few words will be well spent in glancing at this last happy 
crisis in Foster's life. In judging of one who has been so 
widely characterized as a misanthrope and impersonation of 
cold intellectual sternness, it may be of some avail to know 
assuredly how he acted as lover, as father, and as husband. 
We desire definiteness and certainty on these points : both can 
be attained with very little loss of time. 

We presume that the biography of Foster, by his friends 
Messrs. Ryland and Sheppard, must have ere now dissipated 
the general idea that he was unsocial. Of delicate sympathies 
14* 



322 JOHN FOSTER. 

and high intellectual tastes, he was, of necessity, sensible of 
something alien and uncomfortable in an atmosphere of dull- 
ness, presumption, or frivolity ; but he enjoyed, with a more 
lively relish than is anywise common, the gentle, animating 
influence of noble converse. 

This fact is confirmed, and the assurance we have that there 
was no total absence of the light and poetical ingredients in 
Foster's character, well illustrated, by his short series of let- 
ters to Miss Caroline Carpenter, a young lady who attracted 
his attention, before he met her who became his wife. These 
are quite in the tone of a sentimental scion of chivalry. He 
waxes very gallant. He is not perhaps in exact drawing-room 
costume ; the clank of the chain armor is heard, half-muffled 
by the silken doublet ; even in his mood of extreme politeness, 
he can not be weak or frivolous. He does not attain a fault- 
less ball-room idiom ; he has always had something to say, so 
that he has not had practice in the art of piquantly and sim- 
peringly saying nothing. Shall we blame him 1 Perhaps the 
thing transcends the limited human faculties. " Pure, invol- 
untary, unconscious nonsense," Southey thought, " is inimita- 
ble by any effort of sense." But no one can read these letters 
without recognizing a fine youthful strength of emotion, a 
genial heartiness and warmth, removed very far from aught 
allied to austerity. Miss Carpenter died young. 

It was not until he attained his thirtieth or thirty-first year, 
that Foster met the lady to whom he was afterward married. 
She was a woman cast in no common mold. Her faculties 
and her will were powerful ; her feelings were of great strength, 
and rested more deeply in her breast than is usual in her sex ; 
her character was completed and crowned by Christianity. 
She had entered regions of contemplation far beyond those of 
ordinary minds, and her deep musings on the dark and won- 



JOHN rOSTETv,. 323 

derful ill human destiny had imparted to her character a state- 
liness and solemn repose. She was an earnest, intellectua. 
woman, sensible to high ambitions, and fitted, every way, to 
be the friend and counselor of a true man. Foster addressed 
his essays to her ; she could judge of them sternly and well. 
She was able to sympathize with him in his highest moments. 
Nay, she was perhaps by one shade too congenial with Foster ; 
another gleam of sunlight had been a clear advantage. A 
friendship such all can exist only between noble spirits arose be- 
tween them, a friendship founded in natural, unforced sympa- 
thy, and growing by the waters of immortality. After two 
years of intimacy, it began to lose its name in the intensity of 
love, and they resolved to become knit in the closest bonds 
with which friendship can be bound on earth. Five years still 
elapsed ere they were married. Foster's preaching could not 
be depended on for a livelihood, and it was only when he be- 
came permanently connected with the Eclectic Review, that he 
took home his friend, and called her wife. After five years 
waiting, he did this with signal joy. All nature, he tells us, 
seemed brightening around him ; Spring advanced with a new 
smile ; the very roses that wreathed her brow, the very light 
that beamed from her eye, caught new radiance from that fig- 
ure, whom, this time, she led in her hand. 

The married life of Foster was such as might have been 
hoped for. There had been no taint in the original afiection. 
There had been no base thought of gold. Nor had he married 
in the blindness of passion. For this, too, is a fatally erroneous 
course. Men are to marry in emotions they share with the 
angel; not with the animal. Foster knew that when, in the 
calm and real atmosphere of life, the fever of love's first in- 
tensity was cooled, and passion's fine frenzy had passed away, 
he would still see in the eyes of his Maria the immortal sym- 



324 JOHN FOSTER. 

pathy of friendship, deeper than sex, stronger than passion, 
fadeless to eternity. Perhaps the severest form of human 
sorrow, that which most nearly approaches the slow gnawing 
agony of him fixed hopeless on the immovable rock, arises 
from marriage in which there never was any friendship, but the 
original bond was earthly passion, arrogating to itself, with the 
impudent lie of a harlot, the heavenly name of love. It is 
only base natures that are beguiled by the vulgar glare of gold, 
natures incapable of lofty joy or acute sorrow. But passion 
is a Syren of more winning song, of more fatally charming 
lure ; the warm, the impulsive, the noble fill victims to her, 
and, after a short delirious dream, awake to a life of hopeless 
misery. Friendship and love must unite in every married un- 
ion where happiness can be reasonably expected or truly de- 
served : and by friendship we mean an affection arising from 
pure sympathy of spirit, independent of aught else. Let none 
look for happiness in marriage who are unable deliberately and 
firmly to declare, that it would be a happiness to live together 
for life, though they were of the same sex. We state this with 
some breadth, and do so with consideration ; we point to a hid- 
den rock round which the ocean seems to smile in sunny calm, 
but on which many a noble bark has perished. Foster's mar- 
riage was such as beseems a man. The affection began in 
friendship, and around this, as around a rod of heaven's gold, 
the flowers and fruits of earth's pure love, those tender joys 
and beloved interests which a bounteous and motherly nature 
fiiils not to supply, when man has rightly and valiantly per- 
formed his part, gradually and gracefully came to cluster. 

" In passion's flame 
Hearts melt, but melt like ice soon harder froze. 
True love strikes root in reason." 



JOHN FOSTER. 325 

Foster was never compelled, in his momen.s of lofty thought 
and exalted sentiment, to withdraw himself, at least by silence, 
from her who was to sojourn with him inseparably on earth ; 
he did not, in the presence of others, treat his wife's remarks 
as frivolous, or her opinions as slight : he found in her the 
sympathy, and accorded her the natural habitual respect of 
friendship. And let no one think that their happiness was 
merely negative ; a monotonous and insipid respect or admira- 
tion, instead of the warm, enthusiastic, unutterable intensity 
of love. Love cast its golden anchors in their heart of hearts, 
affecting every pulse of their being. 

And a genial home they had ; natural fountains of childish 
mirth and parental pride contiiniaily welling up within it. 
Long after his maiTiage Foster wrote thus : — " I have noticed 
the curious fact, of the difference of the effect of what other 
people's children do and our own. In the situations I have for- 
merly been in, any great noise and racket of children svould 
have extremely incommoded me, if I wanted to read, think, or 
write. But I never mind, as to any such matter of inconveni- 
ence, how much din is made by these brats, if it is not abso- 
lutely in the room where I am at work. When I am with 
them, I am apt to make them, and join in making them, make 
a still bigger tumult and noise, so that their mother sometimes 
complains that we all want whipping together." The happi- 
ness here is very. real. The fact of " these brats" being privi- 
leged, though singular, is not jiexampled. Richt^r, when res- 
olute performance of duty made him deny himself even his 
ordinary meals, yet professed his inability to deny himself the 
inten'uption of his children. We desire no further refutation 
of what, to our astonishment, we have seen alleged touching 
Foster s sternness in his own household : this single passage, 
casting, as it does, a light before and after, is the condensation 



326 JOHN FOSTER. 

of a thousand proofs that every member of his fai lily was a 
note in a perfect harmony, and that, in the fine music which 
was the result, the silver treble of childhood rung clearly and 
cheerily. Look at that father as he rises from his work, yield- 
ing to the fond and joyous impulse of his breast, snatches up 
his children, tosses them in the air, and becomes merely the 
biggest and loudest child of the group : then endeavor to suit 
the part he acts to the grave, stern, grimly intellectual Foster 
of whom you have heard. 

A disorder in his throat, together with his striking unpopu- 
larity, made it now advisable for Foster to relinquish regular 
preaching. His virtual profession became literature. During 
a protracted life he brought his influence to bear on his age 
through the press. Plis residence was, for the most part, the 
vicinity of Bristol. There he worked steadily, in the heart of 
a peacefully happy home, cheered by the sympathy of a noble 
wife and the glad looks of his own children. In the following 
paragraphs, we shall first define, generally, the attitude in 
which he stood to God and man ; and then, more particularly, 
consider certain of the remarkable points in his system of 
opinion. 

When the restlessness of youth began to settle into the se- 
riousness of manhood, Foster seems to have looked more 
earnestly into " the abysmal deeps of personality," into his 
own soul, than ever formerly. He found it not what a spirit 
endued with power to know its Author could normally, and 
by original intention be ; it was an exception and anomaly in 
the works of Him who formed the lily and the star. And 
this imperfection he perceived to be singular in its character. 
The consciousness of himself and his race, written deep and 
inefiaceable, as in eternal adamant, proclaimed man to be a 
being, in such sense free, that he was responsible. The stain 



JOHN FOSTER. 327 

on the flower r.nd the speck in the star were innocent imper- 
fection : the stain on his soul was guilt. Man stood on the 
peaks of the world, where no other creature horn of earth 
could come, and, as to him alone was given to gaze upward 
and onward to the infinitude of spiritual glories, so for him 
alone existed the possibility of an infinite descent. In so mys- 
terious and awful a system of relations, it was of unspeakable 
moment that it should be certainly known that there was a 
living and governing God. This central truth seems never to 
have been questioned by Foster. Nor did he ever seriously 
doubt whether this God had actually and specially spoken in 
the Bible. His doubts pertained mainly to the mode in which 
the word " Christ" was to be taken — as the word of reconcile- 
ment, of explanation, of healing — the explicative formula of 
the universe — the ladder between time and eternity, between 
God and man. Whether Christ was God, or only a sublime 
created being, was, for a time, to him doubtful. Pie question- 
ed, he hesitated, he speculated. But as his mind matured, 
and to the eye of contemplation the universe seemed to deepen 
and widen around him, he became gradually more and more 
impressed with the feebleness of human speculation, and the 
strength of simple, if honest and earnest, faith. His conception 
of the infantine Aveakness of the reason of himself and his breth- 
ren, went on deepening, and stern and indubitable traces of law 
met his eye more and more boldly, as he advanced in years. 
He was profoundly impressed with the mystery which envelops 
human things when contemplated by human reason. The 
poor finite creature stood on his little world, and cast out the 
sounding-line of his tiny intellect into the abysses of infinitude ; 
for a little space it seemed to live, for one little moment it 
seemed to be piercing the darkness, like those darting threads 
of light seen in November ; but then it was swallowed up in 



328 JOHN FOSTER. 

the infinite hollow of the night. He heard afar the music of 
the redeemed, he looked to the heaven of perfect holiness, he 
earnestly yearned thither ; but guilt obscured the heavens, and 
speculation could not pierce the gloom. The infinite value of 
a definite declaration on the part of the living God became 
then manifest ; it seemed plain to his uncontrolled reason that 
the Bible afforded such, in pronouncing Christ the equal of 
the Father, the Infinite God. If this truth was mysterious, it 
was at least certain : speculation, while unable to penetrate 
mystery, had at the siame time strengthened the hand of doubt ; 
but here doubt was slain. He accepted it. Believing defi- 
nitely in the divinity of Christ, and resolving to take the facts 
of the universe as God had first fixed and then revealed them, 
he adopted the general system of belief which has been that 
of so many of earth's most earnest and mighty thinkers. He 
consented to see mankind as a drop of water resting in the 
hollow of Jehovah's hand ; he subscribed to all the essential 
articles of that reading of man's destiny and God's revelation, 
known for several ages as Calvinism. Such was Foster's final 
religious attitude. 

The political ground which he came to assume was worthy 
of himself as a man and a Christian. When the atmosphere 
of the world was all in vibration with the shouts of joy, of 
triumph, and of hope — when many nations seemed about to 
join in choral dance around a freedom arrayed in the snowy 
robe — when love was finally to become lord of all, and science, 
the minister of love, to vanquish even death — it was not to be 
wondered at that Foster, for a time, almost exulted in his hu- 
manity, and forgot the chains which may cramp and degrade 
the soul bound by no external bondage. He took up, as we 
have seen, with sons of Brutus and the writings of Tom Paine : 
perhaps the tough old world was to be renovated even so ! 



JOHN FOSTER. 321 

But the earnestness of his being, the singleness of his eye, 
could not but dissipate such delusions. Gradually the roman- 
tic light was seen to fade from human history and human na- 
ture. Like a true and valiant man, he dared to look mitil he 
saw the worst, and as he gazed with determined though sad- 
dening eye, he 3ould not but perceive that a long dark cloud, 
murky as the %moke of hell, lay along the generations of men ; 
that the shouts of riot and reveling might rise above it, and 
gleams of wild mirth break through, but that, in general, it 
formed the fitting canopy of the lazar-house, the scaffold, and 
the battle-field. The time when tyranny and misery were to 
sink into a common grave, he was compelled to allow, had 
Dot yet come. He awoke startled from his dream of Eden, 
as at the flash of the cherubic swords. But how did he act? 
Terror-stricken like a nervous child, at the shouts of blasphemy 
and the deluge of blood, did he tremble, and shriek, and rush 
back into the arms of the nurse, into old Toryism, and the 
worship of " whatever king doth reign "?" Having looked 
long on the mountain, did he conclude no Moses would ever 
emerge, and bow down to the golden calf of despotism 1 No. 
He took a position worthy of a man who could look deliber- 
ately and choose firmly ; who could hear above the dinning 
present, the great voices of all time ; a far truer position than 
many great men of his and our time. It was manlier than 
Sou they 's, saner than Shelley's, more stable and honest than 
Byron's. He held by the great fact that, however defaced, 
however distorted, however contaminated, freedom is in es- 
sence eternally noble ; and by the kindred fact that despotism, 
however tempered, however embellished, is by nature poison- 
ous and vile. For the present, the graceful and musical mo- 
tions of the free had passed into the mad writhings and con- 
vulsiA e leapings of anarchy. But he did not therefore believe 



330 JOHN FOSTER. 

the devil's elaborate lie, that, because he had power to bring 
evil out of good, it was a right and hopeful attenipt to bring j^ 
^ood out of essential evil. 

"Lord of unceasing love, 
From everlasting Thou ! we shall not die. 
These, even these, in mercy didst Thou form. 
Teachers of Good through Evil, by brief wrong 
Making Truth lovely, and her future might 
Magnetic o'er the fix'd untrembling heart." 

We can scarce conceive a more striking or conclusive proof 
of the soundness and unimpaired vigor of Foster's intellect, 
after having brought his reason reverently to accept " incredi- 
bilities," than is afforded by the fact that, after the fierce re- 
vulsion in his ideas caused by the French Kevolution, he still 
held, and continued with unchanging resolution during life to 
hold, by the standard of freedom. 

When we come more closely to survey Foster's system of 
thought, as displayed in his writings and embodied in his life, 
we are met by one great belief which casts its shadows over 
the whole. This is the belief in man's depravity. Human 
iniquity, wherever he looked, seemed to pollute all, to pervert 
all. There is a certain gloomy sublimity in his tearful gaze 
along the centuries. Where his eye falls, all see&s to become 
dark. As a storm in the high Alps has been observed to hush, 
the songs of the birds, and cast every gleaming point into 
shade, so earth's boasted virtue and grandeur faded before the 
look of Foster. You pointed him to the great and good of 
the past, the wise and heroic, whose names are the pride of 
n'ations: These, he said, were but the mountain-peaks, that 
rose, few and solitary, into the sunlight, while a world of 
ignorance, wretchedness, and crime, weltered below. You 



JOHN FOSTER. 331 

told him of \ aq literary master-pieces of bygone ages, of sub- 
lime thoughts set in the perennial jewelry of poetic beauty : 
These, he replied, were flowers, for the most part gaudy and 
ungraceful, growing on a put:r d mass. You spoke of the be- 
nign agencies which have been at work and are still at work 
on man ; of the powers of science, of the refinements of litera- 
ture, of the gentle rain of education in the atmosphere of earth, 
and the sunlight of religion coming down from heaven : a sad 
smile passed over his features as he deeply muttered. There is 
a power in man's heart, when blown upon by the devil, to 
transform all these into " the sublime mechanics of de- 
pravity !" 

This fearful thought was ever present with Foster, and was 
ever a fountain of woe. The sovereign power in man's nature 
he saw to have been dethroned,- man's crown had fallen from 
his head, man's moral gravitation to the center of the universe 
had been mysteriously broken. He looked upon sin simply 
as an evil, an incalculable evil. We think he was right. We 
deem it inconsiderate and indicative of a want of sober and 
careful reflection, to indulge in expressions regarding our fallen 
state such as are met with in the present day. The individual 
and distinctive nature of sin seems to us to be lost sight of. 
It is spoken of as mere imperfection, as little more than what 
aflbrds an op|5ortunity or a battle-field for goodness. Whereas 
it seems plain that its peculiar nature arises from its connection 
with a free, willing being, as related to a supreme Father, tha-t 
it is inextricably intertwined with the idea of personality, and 
that its least speck is in an essential and unqualified sense vile. 
The supposition of sin's existence in any world of God's crea- 
tion besides our own, was to Foster an idea of acute pain ; 
and we confess we sympathize with him. We disagree with a 
brilliant and able but somewhat incautious writer of the day, 



332 - JOHN FOSTER. 

ill his remarks on this part of Foster's views. We hope there 
is sublimer employment to be found in the universe than bat- 
tling to the death -svith the devil and his angels. It is unsafe 
to familiarize ourselves with the idea that sin came into God's 
creation for its decoration. From eternity to eternity, from 
world to world, sin wash's, and will be — damnable. There is, 
indeed, a sublime aspect of its connection with man's destiny, 
which we have not failed to discern, nor assuredly did Foster ; 
it is a sublime office to battle for light, were it in a world that 
quivered on the smoke of hell ; let us not shrink from the 
combat ! But we dare not forget that what we struggle against 
is eternally vile, and that there is no sublimity, but endless 
shame, worthy of an agony to freeze our very tears, in much 
that it has entailed on humanity. Is there any sublimity in 
the fact, that a man can not grasp the hand of his brother 
without the possibility of its one day striking a dagger to his 
heart ? Why is it that the smile, and the complacent gesture, 
and the softly -tuned word, and all those dear emblems of kind- 
ness which shed a lingering starlight over life, can be mimicked, 
and debased, and turned into the dead paint of what is called 
politeness and etiquette, to hide the sepulchral rottenness of 
false hearts? When the friend you have loved for years 
turns treacherously against you for gold, is there sublimity in 
the fact 1 Is it not the agony of infinite shame that rises in our 
bosoms, as we read that the mode of expression which nature 
has given for the last speechless tenderness of love, was that 
by which a Judas betrayed a Jesus '? Wander through the 
dreary vistas of time : look into the caverns of the Inquisition : 
see the flames encircling that queenly maiden of eighteen who 
had rescued her country ; gaze into the swollen eyes of the 
beautiful Beatrice Cenci; stand by the scaffold of Leonora 
Schoening : then tell us of the sublimity of man's destiny. 



JOHN FOSTER. 333 

Look at that streak of hell-born slime, foul and inexpungeable, 
darker than mist "^r rain-cloud on the purity of Mont Blanc, 
which blackens th-j lofty snow of Bacon's brow, and then speak 
of the sublimity of man's destiny. Worst, far worst of all, why 
is it that in our own hearts a hellish venom lurks 1 The ex- 
ternal battle were slight, if it were all. But it is not so. Why 
is it that we feel the sugges ..on of generosity ever cramped by 
some small insinuation of self? Why is it that only at rarest 
moments we can rise to the feelings of noblest friendship with 
man, or devotion to God 1 Why is it that, miless we are ut- 
terly lost to nobleness, or utterly blind to our own state, we 
are so often "replenished with contempt 1" Sin has done all 
this. We have heard enough of sublimity ; we must change 
our tone a little. Not death alone, and pain, and disease, has 
this hellish agency brought along with it ; but as it were the 
very rottenness and repulsive horror of death; ingratitude, 
cowardice, sloth, uneleanness, treachery. Sin is the blackness 
of all light, the defilement of all purity, the all-embracing for- 
mula for what is ignoble. We shall still have self denial and 
nobleness enough to hope that our poor world is the only 
tainted spot in the universe of God. 

Foster's intense conception of sin is the key to much in his 
system of thought. This we shall find as we proceed. 

We have seen that his ultimate belief was that which is 
commonly designated Calvinism. But there was one point on 
which he rejected its dogma; he never believed in the eternity 
of hell torments. There are few passages in literature more 
profoundly interesting, than the long letter in which he details 
his belief and its grounds on this solemn subject : of all the 
writings of Foster it is that which at once reveals to us most 
of his character, and draws our heart toward him with the 
tenderest feelings of affection. 



334 JOHN FOSTER. 

The source of his belief here was twofold : the eye-to-eye 
vividness with which h s imagination painted before him the 
horrors of eternal destruction, and the trembling sensibility 
with which he looked upon any fellow-creature in pain. We 
see both of these in the following brief extract ; it seems to us 
inexpressibly touching : — " It often surprises me that the fear- 
ful doctrine sits, if I may so express it, so easy on the minds 
of the religious and benevolent believers of it. Surrounded 
immediately by the multitudes of fellow-mortals, and looking 
abroad on the present, and back on the past state of the race, 
and regarding them, as to the immense majority, as subjects 
of so direful destination, how can they have any calm enjoy- 
ment of life, how can they even be cordially cheerful, how can 
they escape the incessant haunting of dismal ideas, darkening 
the economy in which their lot is cast? I remember suggest- 
ing to one of them such an image as this : — Suppose the case 
to be that he knew so many were all doomed to suffer, by penal 
infliction, a death by torture, in the most protracted agony, 
with what feelings would he look on the populous city, the 
swarming country, or even a crowded, mixed congregation 1 
But what an infinitesimal trifle that would be, in comparison 
with what he does believe in looking on these multitudes. 
How, then, can they bear the sight of the living world around 
themf 

Read these words, and judge of the heart of Foster. With 
what a trembling, earnest hand, did he trace them ! What a 
world of tender emotion, of mild but intense human sympa- 
thy, of deepest love, is shown here! And how beautiful, 
though sad, is the simplicity that breathes through the pass- 
age ! In perfect unconsciousness he writes, all unthinking of 
the rugged bosoms of his fellow-men, forgetful that each has 
his own little circle of work, with its own little circle of dust, 



JOHN FOSTER. 335 

encompassing it and him and very much shutting out the rest 
of the world. Of a thousand men, probably not one has any 
definite conception of what the common belief implies. The 
imagination is too dull to conceive it, the heart is too hard to 
feel it. But Foster's intense conceptive power led him in 
thought into the very bosom of hell ; there he saw human eyes 
fixed in the agony of eternal despair, there he listened to the end- 
less, hopeless wailings of his brethren ; and his heart was steeled 
by no hard worldliness, by no wild fanaticism, to sympathy v/ith 
their woes ; he seemed to feel that, were he himself among the 
celestial bands, the knowledge that those with whom he had 
once been a fellow-sojourner were in keen and everlasting 
anguish, would make him weep upon the plains of heaven. 
He thought not of himself, all his pain and sorrow came of 
sympathy. If ever in the breast of man there was a heart 
more tremulously tender than a woman's or a child's, that 
heart was John Foster's. 

Such was the source of his belief respecting God's punish- 
ment of sinners. The argument to which he was led can be 
briefly summed up. After painting fearfully the horrors of 
eternal woe, he deliberately adds : " I acknowledge my inabili- 
ty (I would say it with reverence) to admit this belief, to- 
gether with a belief in the divine goodness — the belief that 
' God is love,' that his tender-mercies are over all his works." 
He did not pass on to a belief in immediate and promiscuous 
redemption : " On no allowable interpretation do they" (the 
words of Scripture on the subject) " signify less than a very 
protracted duration, and a formidable severity." 

The above may fairly be said to be Foster's one argument ; 
the aids he seeks from Scripture to his views are, at best, but 
attempts to open a path to a possible warrant on its part. 
And, in truth, it seems to us well-nigh the only argument of 



336 JOHX FOSTER. 

strength which can be urged on that side. Let it not, how- 
ever, be thought that we therefore deem the position of those 
who adduce it weak. We consider it not only strong, but, in 
one point of view, absolutely unassailable. If John Foster, or 
any man, deliberately and honestly conceive it irreconcilable 
with infinite love that God should condemn the wicked to 
everlasting punishment, we see not how he can accept the fact 
without blasphemy. If a man's reason, gazing earnestly and 
reverently, with lively consciousness of its own fliint and glim- 
mering vision, and full thought of the compass and might of 
infinite love guiding infinite power, is yet unable, we say not 
to justify, but to believe in the possible justice of eternal tor- 
ments, we see not how he can accept the doctrine ; it is not 
lawful for any man, taking the sentence, " God is love," to use 
it as a fiery rod, though it were of celestial gold, \vherewith to 
sear the eyeballs of his reason. One man, considering long, 
and searching Scripture, can, with no outrage on his moral be- 
ing, embrace in one view the courts of eternal joy and the 
prison of eternal darkness, and believe unconstrainedly that 
the King who sits over both is Love ; such an one, we be- 
lieve, was Jonathan Edwards. But another man can not do 
so ; and if he is as honest and reverent as the last, who is 
there on earth thai** can accuse him? Deeply and solemnly 
earnest was Foster ; we seem to see a dark cloud laboring 
along that letter, dropping tears on its way. We can not sub- 
scribe to his belief on the point ; we think his view was some- 
what contracted, and that, by a more mature consideration of 
what is revealed to us of God's dealings and designs in the 
creation of man, and a warrantable though careful borrowing 
of light from other quarters, it might have undergone import- 
ant and advantageous change ; but how, with his premises, he 
could avoid his conclusion, we can not see. 



JOHN FOSTER. 337 

We are not called upon here to discuss fully, or even to 
enter upon this stupendous subject. So profoundly difficult 
does the whole question of eternal punishment appear to us, 
and so intimately allied with a series of questions that have 
baffled, and surely will for ever baffle, human reason, that 
there is, perhaps, no conceivable case in which we would more 
carefully avoid peremptory or upbraiding dogmatism. Poor 
finite beings, treating such a question, may well bear with 
each other 1 

We do no more at present than offer a general and prelim- 
inary remark, defining, in some measure, the conditions of the 
question, and indicating what every man, in coming to a de- 
cision regarding it, has, so to speak, to take along with him. 

In a volume of sermons, published some time since by Mr. 
Theodore Parker, of America, we find the matter treated in 
the following off-hand, easy manner : — " You look on the base 
and wicked men who seem as worms in the mire of civiliza- 
tion, often delighting to bite and to devour one another, and 
you remark that these also are the children of God ; that Pie 
loves each of them, and will suffer no ancient Judas, nor 
modem kidnapper, to perish ; that there is no child of perdi- 
tion in all the fiimily of God, but He will lead home his sinner 
and his saint, and such as are sick with the leprosy of their 
wickedness, ' the murrain of beasts,' bowed down and not able 
to lifl themselves up. He will carry in his arms !" 

Is it possible to believe that there is not in this something 
essentially wrong ? Is the subject, then, after all, one of such 
wayside plainness, such . clear, and absolute, and sunny sim- 
plicity 1 Are the clouds and thick darkness that have from 
the olden time mysteriously vailed the future, and cast their 
shade over such intellects as those of Luther, Calvin, Leibnitz, 
Pascal, and Jonathan Edwards, to roll away before such a soft 

15 



338_ JOHN FOSTER. 

summer gale of sentimentality as this 1 We can not believe 
it. We can scarce conceive aught more diametrically opposed 
to the mightiest instincts that have swayed nations, and the 
most earnest beliefs which have been arrived at by great indi- 
vidual thinkers. What real thinker has there been, from 
Plato to Dante, from Dante to Calvin, and from Calvin, -we 
shall add, to Carlyle, who has not recognized something un- 
speakably stern, something to create a solemn awe, in the gen- 
eral structure and relations of this universe 1 Were nature 
all sunny and cloudless ; were the sea at all times glassy and 
still, or the pathway only of the spiced and gentle wind, lead- 
ing along the white sail as if it were an infant of Ocean ; were 
there only soft flowery lawns and May mornings, and no vol- 
canoes or avalanches; were there but the smiles of birth-day 
and of bridal upon human faces, no furrow traced by tears, no 
wrinkle writ by age, no shadow cast by coming death; were 
human history one joyous chime, ascending from the green 
earth to meet and mingle with the angels' music, broken by no 
wailings or sorrow, no shrieks and groans of battle ; had the 
slopes of Olivet been ever mantled with the vine, and rung 
only to the song of the vintage, and never seen the crosses by 
thousands in the gray morning ; did the human eye, as years 
go on, gather brightness, and beam with ever a clearer and 
prouder gladness, and were it not a fact that the eye of every 
man or woman of well advanced years, has one expression 
giving tone to the others, vanishing, it may be, for an hour, 
but always returning, and that an expression of sorrow : then 
might we have heart to join Mr. Parker in his soft and child- 
like strain. But whenever we would assay to do so, we see 
ourselves confronted by immovable flicts, by this one great 
fact — MISERY ; and our tongue cleaves to the roof of our 
mouth. Has it been all a mistake, then, by which men have 



JOHN FOSTER. 339 

ever regarded death as dark and calamitous, and its infliction 
the severest form of punishment 1 What means tlie smoke 
of those sacrifices rising from every nation on earth to an 
angry deity 1 Who put that word into the mouth of con- 
science, giving, along with it, a power to compel all men to 
listen, which declares and has ever declared man responsible 
and the sinner in danger "? Surely the assertion that these 
phenomena have reference solely to the inconveniences en- 
tailed on the sinner in this life, requires no refutation. God 
has not averted the painful effects of sin in this world ; He let 
Judas go to his despairing death, and a devil even on earth 
gnawed the heart of Saul; by what argument, then, can we 
conclude that He will totally avert the effects of sin in the 
next, and place Judas and Stephen alike within the light of His 
throne 1 " Infinite pity yet also infinite rigor of law : it is so 
nature is made ; it is so Dante discerned that she was made." 
These are the words of Mr. Carlyle. 

We have already referred to the prevalent assertion of Fos- 
ter's misanthropy. We boldly denied it, and ventured the 
affirmation that his heart was tenderly kind. We think this 
will now be agreed to ; the words he uttered regarding eternal 
punishment put it beyond further question. But it still admits 
of dispute whether he did not take a morbidly gloomy view 
of human affairs — whether, though personally of tender kind- 
liness, he may not yet, as a public teacher, be rightfully desig- 
nnted a misanthrope. Most of the ideas abroad regarding him 
have it for their basis that he was such ; and even in a noted 
disquisition upon his character, we find it sententiously stated 
that his tendercst emotions were acts of ratiocination. Per- 
haps precisely the most important lesson he conveyed to his 
age may be brought to light by inquiring into the truth of 
such statements. 



340 JOHN FOSTER. 

Foster's tremulous sensib lity, and his vivid and sleepless 
imagination, gave him what we may call a perpetual conscious- 
ness of human misery. The misanthrope says men are bad, 
worthy to be hated, and deserving their sorrow ; Foster also 
said men were bad, but he heard love whispering that they 
were weak, and hatred for their sin was drowned in pity for 
their suffering. 

" 'Never morning wore 
To evening, but some heart did break ;" 

and he seemed to hear it break. Do we not, as may be worth 
noting as we pass, see so much in his portrait ? Is not the 
expression which gives it tone that of tender, yearning affec- 
tion 1 Sorrow and misgiving are in the eye, but they seem to 
float in pity and love. There is something of trouble in the 
earnest, inquiring glance, telling of long pondering and of a 
high curiosity not to be satisfied, but there is neither indigna- 
tion nor disdain. If the lip is faintly curled, it is not with con- 
tempt ; it seems to tremble with a sad and extorted confession, 
that human effort is all but vain in assuaging human woe. As 
we look, are we not vividly reminded of the lines by Keats — 

" Anxious, pitying eyes, 
As if he always listen'd to the sighs 
Of the goaded world ?" 

These words are precisely descriptive of Foster's habitual cast 
of mind. His face is not hopeful, it is not joyous ; but if one 
emotion is absent, it is that of contemptuous hatred, and if one 
is present, it is that of scarcely hoping love. 

Foster was a stern teacher. Looking, with penetrative vis- 
ion, over human history, and entering by imaginative power 
into every scene and region of misery — looking on ancient 
history, and seeing, " by its faint glimmer," that it had been 



JOHN FOSTER. 341 

" an ocean of blood" — and marking how, in modern times, even 
the celestial light of Christianity had but fiiutly and fitfully 
irradiated the gloom of earth — he turned round, with the 
austerity of earnestness and the sadness of love, and pro- 
claimed, in solemn accents, that the world was no joyful gar- 
den, but a sterile desert, its wells few, its palm-trees faded, 
and resting, as under a sky of iron, beneath the curse. Let 
the shout of triumph, he said, die away : brethren, these are no 
cool tranquil lakes, these towers and palaces are not of pearl 
and gold ; these are but the mockeries of our sorrow, no man 
of heart will look upon them ; beneath our feet is burning 
sand, and it is manful to know it ; only on the far horizon 
gleams the serene light of our home. Gloomy, misanthropic, 
only half the truth, say a thousand ; alas, it is too near the 
whole truth, and of it we must be at times reminded. Easy 
it is to paint your world : so infinitely easier, as has, we think, 
been remarked, to paint it an inch deep, than to amend it by 
a hair's-breadth. Heroism, virtue, domestic joys, rural bliss, 
the progress of the species, the sway of love, liberty, equality, 
and fraternity ; — do you think Foster had not heard of these 1 
Yes, and for a time he listened earnestly, if perhaps there 
might be any healing there ; and even when disappointed, he 
held to the truth they shadowed. But how did his strong 
heart respond to the general advocates of freedom in our day ? 
How did Enceladus greet the soft frivolous accents of the gentle 
Qymene, who lisped her comforting syllables to the Titans 1 

" jS'ot thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all 
That rebel Jove's whole armory was spent ; 
!N"ot world on world upon these shoulders piled, 
Could agonize me more than baby-words 
In midst of this dethronement horrible.'* 

There are few if any spectacles afforded by our earth more 



342 JOHN FOSTER. 

noble in then sadness than this first which we find presented 
by Foster, and misnamed misanthropy. It is the spectacle of 
a man who looks over the ranks of his brothers as they wend 
mournfully through time, who feels a sorrow deeper than words, 
striving upward to his eye to pour itself forth, but who yet 
sternly crushes down the " climbing agony," and compels his 
tears to burn only in his heart, lest they film his eye, and pre- 
vent the earnest glance of thought from piercing into the evil. 
This, too, is among the duties of man ; to stand, like a kind 
physician, beside the writhing patient, mankind, and, while 
listening to the groans, to mete the extent and virulence of 
the distemi^er, and, it may be, apply some remedy which will 
for the time increase the plaining. A man on earth may have 
too much love to weep ! 

The duty of man, as man, is thought. This is his distinctive 
regal duty. Pity and love may aid and cheer him, but, as 
sovereign worker in this world, his duty is governance, guid- 
ance — in one word, thought. And in order to this, he must, 
with a valiant calmness, know in all cases the worst. 

" To bear all Baked truths, 
And to envisage circumstance all calm — 
Tliat is the top of sovereignty." 

No man is qualified to be a public guide or instructor of men, 
who can not more or less do this ; and a man generally is mighty 
in proportion as he can do it, and has a love strong enough to 
dare it. 

But there is another aspect in which to regard Foster's 
gloomy representations of the human state and prospects. His 
position was twofold : in one point of view, it resembled that 
of the misanthrope ; in another, it was diametrically opposed 
thereto. He declared the work to be stern, the battle to be a 



JOHN FOSTER. 343 

reality. But he held earnestly by his standard, he never 
flinched work. Hear this grand sentiment from his lips : — "All 
that pass from this world must present themselves as from 
battle, or be denied to mingle in the eternal joys and triumphs 
of the conquerors." We know that he was tenderly kind, and 
he never for a moment flinched from the combat. This union 
absolutely negatives misanthropy, and the general notion which 
attributes such to Foster must be dissipated. He was a prac- 
tical living enforcement, with a new and peculiar energy, of 
the great lesson that every man must work. Plowever dark 
the aspect of the field, though no higher hope exists for you 
than to lie cold and stifi* while your brethren go on to victory, 
yet you must fight on. Comparatively easy it is to struggle 
when our hope is bright, although this also is noble ; but far 
more difficult is it, to know . all the hazards and toils of the 
combat, to see no prospect that our individual might will per- 
ceptibly avail, and yet to keep the sword unbared, and never 
dream of returning it to the scabbard. This is that high form 
of virtue which is missed by the real misanthrope ; and it 
Foster attained. Whoso fully comprehends his whole position 
here, has understood his life : here, we think, lies the problem 
of his biography. We shall call this gloom, then, of which we 
have heard so much, a right noble, a sublime melancholy. In 
the strength of youth, as we have seen, his hopes had been 
high ; his eye had caught the distant gleaming of paradaisal 
fields ; he had seemed to hear the sound of millennial anthems ; 
his heart had swelled high with emotion ; he had shouted 
for the battle. But he soon paused in astonished sadness. It 
was as if a seraph had seen from afar the new smile of our 
planet among the stars of God, and had come through the azure 
to hear the notes of its new hymn of praise, and had landed 
on its golden margin, and been confronted by — sin. The sor- 



344 J OHN FOSTER. 

row that was in Foster's eje had been known by the noblest 
of earth. It was that sadness which shaded the brow of Plato ; 
such sadness was in the heart of Solomon when he said that 
much wisdom was much grief. 

We say not such sorrow as this is absolutely required of us, 
nor certainly ought it to darken the whole character. With 
all her sternness, nature has appointed feelings of mirth to play 
over the dark places of our lot. A stern mother she is, a 
stern destiny is ours : but sometimes, nevertheless, she does 
take her children in her arms and smile on and kiss them ; 
she does intend us to yield at times to glad impulses, to leave 
our brooding, to look at the sunny side of the cloud. It is a 
fact that, at every moment, bitter tears are furrowing human 
faces ; it is a fact that, at every moment, Night, with her 
shroudiug darkness, is closing over half the world : but it is 
a fact also, that at every moment, some are smiling ; at every 
moment, somewhere, Morn is scattering golden light. And, 
above all, the Christian may be removed from overwhelming 
access of grief; he 

" Whose meditative sympatliies repose 
Upon the breast of Faith ;" 

he who can overarch all clouds and contradictions with an 
infinite radiance. But the calm rejoicing of the healthful and 
balanced Christian mind is removed as far as possible from 
flippancy or thoughtless gayety. If our natures are of the sunny 
complexion, let us be glad and thankful ; but let us not forget 
that some of the greatest intellects of time have looked sadly 
on human affairs, or neglect the lesson they teach. Of these 
intellects, though not taking a high rank among them, was 
Foster's. He came near certain fatal influences, but he re- 
mained unscathed by all. He knew doubt, yet he was not 
driven into infidelity ; he saw difficulty, yet he was not driven 



JOHN FOSTER. 345 

into despair. He told men that the battle with principalities 
and powers was stern and long, and with hasty superficiality 
they exclaimed that he was wrapped in a garment of mere 
gloom. He shrunk, in horror and agony, from the baleful 
form of sin, as he saw it in the world around him ; by a 
sublime casting of the mantle of his love over the universe, 
he yearned to shut out from its rejoicing borders that mortal 
taint, and confine it to his own blackened world ; and they 
exclaimed that he was a misanthrope ! 

• In considering the works of any powerful and sincere thinker, 
it is well to give a close attention to what in them is defective 
or erroneous. In tracing the line beyond which, by being 
pressed too far, truth becomes of no avail, or even, as extremes 
meet, rushes off to embrace error, we can mark well the line- 
aments of the truth itself, and comprehend, more fully than 
before, the work done by him whose writings we inspect. The 
mistakes, also, of a sincere man, and one of great influence in 
the world of mind, are more apt to obtain currency and pro- 
duce evil, than those of one of slighter build : from gold it is 
worth while to separate the clay. We therefore proceed to 
state a few important defects in Foster's opinions and teaching, 
and to endeavor to evolve the full truth in each case. 

It is not difficult to enunciate in general terms the one 
great want alike in Foster's powers, knowledge and opinions. 
In one word, he wanted completeness. His imaginatlonj pow- 
erful, amazingly powerful, to draw a single figure, or a single 
spectacle, could not produce a full and harmonized picture. 
Passages in his works are, perhaps, not to be surpassed for 
lurid distinctness, for happy metaphor, or for clear force ; but 
he could not produce a complete book, or design a complete 
essay, and what Dr. Cheevcr says of his compositions, that 
they commence and end by no rule, and are governed by no 
15 * " 



346 JOHN FOSTER. 

principles of s}-mmetrj, is accurately true. His knowledge 
was various, and in its separate parts, so far as we can judge, 
sufficiently exact ; but it was fatally deficient in method, it 
fornaed no complete system or series, beautiful to behold and 
easily referred to : it was like a museum packed up in the hold 
of a ship. His strictly intellectual power and his strictly rea- 
soned opinions have the same characteristic. We are able to 
express in his own words the great fact, that " the conjunction 
of truths is of the utmost importance for preserving the genu- 
ine tendency, and securing the appropriate efficacy of each ; " 
yet his system of opinion was by no means symmetrical. Each 
separate doctrine which he enforces has an aspect of truth, but 
often this aspect, by being made to fill the field of view, 
implies error. After all his pondering, he had reached no 
explaining theory, even of certain flicts of history, which can, 
within limits, be accounted for, and whose allied good and evil 
can be discriminated. The truth of these general remarks 
will become manifest as we proceed. 

Of the meaning and function, in the present stage of man's 
history as a species, of certain agencies, which must always, in 
their ultimate relations, be regarded with sorrow, but which 
subserve important purposes in the present dispensation, Fos- 
ter had no clear conception. Of these agencies, by far the 
most remarkable is war. If all other arguments in proof of 
the fact that the species man is fallen were swept away, the 
one great fact of war would yet, we say not prove to us the 
fall, but render it beyond our power to conceive a man deli- 
berately believing his species still in that state of perfection in 
which God created it. But if war came w^ith sin, it came as 
the red-hot iron comes with poison ; to scarify and blacken, 
but yet tD prevent pain from becoming death. When sin en- 
tered, a great severance took place \ right and might parted 



JOHN FOSTER. 347 

company. One in the bygone eternity, again to be one in the 
coming eternity, in the little vexed strait of time, tossing and 
"weltering and never at rest, which lies between the two, they 
severed. To say that might and right are one " in the long 
run," is to enunciate what we have just endeavored to express; 
to say might and right are one in time, traceably and exactly 
one in human history hitherto, or to be so ere the species is 
restored to its native condition, is to deny that ever a Helot 
was murdered or a child oppressed. When might and right 
become one. War will embrace his armor, and lay down, and 
die. But till then, War has functions to perform. These 
are various, but perhaps the most important among them is 
this : either, in his rough and rude manner, to vindicate out- 
raged justice and let the oppressed go free ; or, in the blood 
of these oppressed on the lost battle-field, to inscribe a per- 
petual testimony to the right, and a stern and dumb appeal to 
Heaven. 

Of other agencies, seemingly evil, which God makes to 
praise Him, we shall not speak. How did Foster think and 
speak of war 1 He looked over human history, with a search- 
ing and a loving eye ; he saw it followed by a pale host of 
woes, and moving through all time to a music of bitter wail, 
making man its prey : he broke into a shriek of sorrow and 
indignation, and never went further or altered his tone. Now, 
it can not be asserted, in proof of any man's being a thinker, 
that he has perceived the evil of war. Since themes began to 
be written in academies, that was known and discoursed of. 
Every school-boy has a set of tropes to illustrate it. But a 
profound and deliberate thinker should see further. The very 
recognition of that great necessity at which we have pointed, 
at least in bygone ages, were enough to silence a scarce manly 
and perpetual whining over the woes of war ; but a concep- 



348 JOHN I'OSTER. 

tion even of this we have not found in Fostei Mach less did 
he see how it has, in many ages, subserved otner and benign 
purposes. Dear-bought, indeed, have been the harvests which 
its red rain has made to grow, but it has made them grow. 
Look upon Europe at the time of the breaking up of the Ro 
man Empire ; it is a case precisely in point. The appearance 
presented is inexpressibly awful : one scene of horror, of de- 
vastation, of tumult, from the gates of Constantinople to the 
pillars of Hercules. How far better had it seemed, how flir 
higher had been the sentimental beauty, if things had continued 
as they were, if Rome's soft licentious slaves had gone on 
dawdling and lolling till now. But on that Europe God had 
other nations to be planted ; new blood had to be introduced ; 
and the northern hordes came down, sword in hand. It is an 
undeniable ethnological fact, that, by the agency of the fearful 
war which ensued, by the commingling of races resulting there- 
from, the puny, emasculated subjects of Rome were exchanged 
for those nations, which now, for more than a thousand years, 
have reared their mountain-like forms on Europe. This 
is a great fact. Say, if you will, that God overruled the 
horrors of war for the advancement of mankind ; vre, indeed, 
consider this the most accurate mode of expressing the 
ftict : but learn to discern the mode in which He does over- 
rule it, and say not that the devil alone had a hand in the 
matter. 

Often amid the shakings of the nations, when men's hearts 
were failing them for fear, and in the bosoms of all the noble 
there was a speechless yearning for rest, God's Providence has 
been at work, the cloud seeming to vail love has been " itself 
love," in the course of centuries the light of that love has 
beamed out perceptibly to all. What a profound significance 
now attaches to the followmg words of Milton, uttered in re- 



JOHN FOSTER. 349 

ference to that tumultuous time when " faithfu.- and free-bora 
Englishmen and good Christians" were driven in multitudes 
from home and country, to seek shelter in " the wide ocean 
and the savage deserts of America :" — " Oh, sir, if we could 
but see the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are 
wont to give a personal form to what they please, how would 
she appear, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon 
her head, and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes." 
Were the eye of John Milton now to rekindle in its dry 
socket, what a gleam of glory would flash from it, as he gazed 
over to the " savage deserts of America !" How would he 
now robe in poetic life the figure of England, looking to the 
mighty nation to which she gave birth in pains like those of 
dissolution ! How proudly would he now regard the Island 
mother and her Titan son, intrusted by God with the high 
commission of bearing the standard of freedom in the front of 
the peoples ! Would he not at least bow his head in wonder- 
ing praise, and declare that, clearer and more powerful than 
ever song of bard, to justify the ways of God to man, is the 
silent roll of the ages ? 

We have said we would speak only of war, but there might 
be urged considerations of a nature somewhat similar, to show 
that pestilence and fimine are not unmingled evils, that even 
their steps are watched of God. Nations spring again with 
fresh vigor to their feet, after having been cast down. Through 
the branches of the pruned forest, rushes the stream of lifa 
with wilder energy, and gushes forth in a fresh magnificence 
of foliage. No fact seems to us more likely to be soon un- 
folded to the careful student of history, than that after every 
period of winter has come a period of spring. 

With such thoughts as these, Foster had no acquaintance* 
He could nowise see his way through history. 



350 JOHN FOSTER. 

It were foolish to conclude, from aught we have said ah fve, 
that we are pleaders for war, famine, and pestilence. We 
know these are doomed, and the sooner they go the better ; 
they point to a fearful chronic disease in the system of human 
affairs ; in the evolution of man's history, of God's plan in 
man's creation, they will vanish. Welcome shall science be, 
with all her mild methods, thrice welcome. As war was the 
agency by which a sufficiently wide field was prepared for 
first planting the foundations of Christ's kingdom on earth ; 
as it was the sword of Rome which, all unconsciously of the 
end to be accomplished, fitted the world for Christianity in its 
troubled militant state ; we trust that, when that kingdom is 
to be fully established, and the golden battlements of Zion to 
cover the whole earth, the preparing agencies will be no longer 
those of war, but those of peace. But, meanwhile, nothing is 
to be gained from immature attempts or Utopian expectations. 
Humanity is a patient difficult to deal with, and, for our part, 
we suspect the monster will have to be bled several times 
yet ; it will bleed no longer than until bleeding ceases to be 
a necessary agent of cure. 

Reflections such as we have indicated are of great moment. 
They enlarge our apprehension of the wisdom of God, and 
show how deeply, yet unmistakably. His designs penetrate 
the general framework of things : they foster a child-like, yet 
manful confidence in the Almighty, and hint audibly, however 
the floods rage, that He sits King forever : lastly, and in es- 
pecial application to our day, they prevent men from fancying, 
as even earnest and able men are apt to do, that their time is 
the worst of times, and that the world is falling to wreck 
around them. They impart 

"That severe content 
That comes of thought and musing ;" 



JOHN FOSTER. 351 

they might have whispered to South ey, Arnold, and Carlyle, 
to possess their souls in patience. To proceed. 

In all Foster's performance as a Christian instructor, there 
is no circumstance which we regard with feelings of deeper 
admiration, than his downright advocacy of strict Christianity 
within the courts of literature. He will have a Christian to 
be one in thought, word, and deed : he will listen to no com- 
promise ; he will hear of no palliation ; him who is not with 
Christ he will declare to be against Him. So far he has our 
warmest sympathy. As the old Judaistic preaching of law is 
obsolete, so the old philosophic preaching of virtue is obso- 
lete ; law and virtue are both embraced, and, as it were trans- 
figured, in the doctrine of Christ crucified. But here, also, we 
can say with full assurance that his view was narrow and er- 
rcTneous. He felt two powers contending within him. Gifted 
by nature with a fine sympathy for all that was beautiful and 
elevating, he could not but experience a thrill of richest enjoy- 
ment when any tint of real beauty met his eye, any tone of 
real beauty fell upon his ear ; but he had often met such in 
the spacious fields of literature, both ancient and modern, 
where he had extensively wandered, and these were, for the 
most part, unchristian ; the sovereign voice of religion seemed 
to say, that in these regions it was sinful to expatiate, and that 
every fruit to be plucked there, however clear and golden its 
beauty, must be an apple of Sodom. He took his determina- 
tion. He uttered a voice of warning and condemnation. On 
all literature commonly called profane he laid his ban. How- 
ever pure the joy appeared, however distinctly it was from 
inner and native fountains of sympathy that the rapture seemed 
to flow, it was to be curbed, thwarted, cast aside, if the object of 
beauty which evoked it was not within some inclosure distinctly 
marked off for Christian purposes. In this we think he erred. 



352 JOHN FOSTER. 

Two very great departments of truth may be categorized 
and looked at in parallel lines, under the respective titles of 
laws of mathematics, and laws of beauty. The limits of these 
departments, their points of divergence and of coalescence, are 
not our present concern. We have to speak of the laws of 
beauty, and introduce the laws of mathematics to aid our ex- 
planation. Of both of these we have this assertion to make ; 
that they are absolute and self-dependent. No one with whom 
men would reason doubts the absoluteness of mathematical 
truth : it has been questioned, but we must at present assume 
it as a fact, that the laws of beauty — what is often called 
aesthetic, and what Euskin calls theoretic truth — are also abso- 
lutely true and single. In other words, however much they 
may seem to man to fluctuate, these laws are the writing of 
the Eternal mind, and are more stable than the created uni- 
verse. This is now, so far as we know, the belief of all our 
higher thinkers ; its being questioned so largely during last 
century was merely the exhibition, in the region of criticism, 
of that skepticism characteristic of the time. The natural and 
usual connection between sensational theories of morals and 
relative theories of beauty, has been ably noted by Dr. 
M'Vicar. The ancient and noble faith is, that the laws of 
beauty are independent of man and removed above circum- 
stance, precisely as the truths of geometry. The laws by 
which the colors of the rainbow are mingled^ — by which the 
draped elm-branch hangs — ^by v>'hich the long sweeps of 
mountain curve are drawn — by which the waves bend, and 
wreath, and dance, with the grace of new-born Cytheras — are 
as firmly established in the mind of God as the laws by 
which he has hung the world on nothing. If any man agrees 
not with us here, we can carry him no further. But, suppos- 
ing this granted, let us next inquire how the human mind, m 



JOHN FOSTER. 363 

its present shattered and enfeebled condition, looks at the re- 
spective provinces of mathematic and aesthetic truth. The 
process by which man has unfolded the truths of mathematics 
seems to us comparable to the gradual removal of the clay, 
or sandstone, or chalk, from a fossil. Line by line, the encas- 
ing substance is removed, the plates of the old scales, the 
forms of the old bones, are displayed ; the instant a new por- 
tion is uncovered, it is seen perfectly, and without mistake ; 
nothing further is to be learned regarding it. Exactly so in 
mathematics ; as each new proposition is unfolded, the attain- 
ment is perfect, removed from the possibility at once of ques- 
tion and of improvement. The human mind has retained 
power, by however long a process, to unvail mathematical 
truth perfectly. It has not been so with the laws of beauty. 
These may be compared rather, to immovable stars, fixed in 
the heavens, while far below there is a cloudy atmosphere, 
kept in perpetual turmoil by tempests, through which they can 
but gleam at moments ; up into the vault men gaze and gaze 
with their sin-dimmed eyes ; so wildly do the clouds roll and 
toss, and so feeble is their vision, that at times they are apt 
to turn away, and exclaim that those stars are not fixed at 
all, but are mere stray meteors wandering through the cloud- 
rack. As yet no man has so clearly and conclusively fixed 
what their position and relative magnitude are, as to command 
universal assent ; but in no age has the eyesight of men been 
so dim, that stray gleams from them have not been noted, and 
sure though partial tidings of what they are obtained. But 
the grand fact to be remembered is this : That every gleam 
really discerned has been seen by man, not created, has been a 
glimpse of a light of which God is the eternal fountain. For 
some reason, which we may well leave to His wisdom, neither 
the laws of mathematics, nor the laws of beauty, are in this 



354 JOHN FOSTER. 

world revealed specially to those who seek a re-attain raent 
of son ship in God's house thi'ough Jesus Christ ; but, as the 
Christian believes in, and derives intellectual nourishment from, 
a new truth in mathematics, discovered by a blasphemer, he 
may rightfully and with good conscience look upon every beam 
of real beauty, though seen by an infidel, as a revelation of 
the thoughts and workings of his God. And the truths of 
beauty seem to be of a higher sort than those of mathematics. 
These last are the laws by which God fixed the pillars of His 
universe ; but beauty, we may reverently say, is His very gar- 
ment ; and our greater ignorance of its laws than of the laws 
of mathematics is, perhaps, because, as fallen children, we can 
not see our Father's face. 

Truly glorious is the prospect opened up by the simple and 
sublime truth we have feebly enunciated. It enables the Chris- 
tian to go round the garden of poetry, separating the Satanic 
slime from paradaisal flowers, claiming all that is beautiful for 
his God. Thus is that teeming sympathy with loveliness, which 
Foster thought it necessary to restrain, nurtured to full fruition 
and perfect bloom. Thus all that the human imagination has 
in every age framed of true beauty, returns to the Christian in 
a new relation, and with new significance ; every form of grace 
that the Greek saw in the dusky wood, or rising from the ocean, 
every foir mythic youth of Eastern song, every impersonation 
of summer dawn by Northern bard. The vessels of the Pagan 
temples, the notes of Pagan choirs, may be turned to the serv- 
ice of the true God, and even from the sterile desert of atheism 
be gathered angels' food. We shall see the stars though the 
night is around them ! 

The devil is darkness and defilement, but he never can cast 
his livery over, and compel into his service, one ray of God's 
light ; the fact of a beautiful object's being beautiful, is equiva- 



JOHN FOSTER. 355 

lent to the fact that its beaut?/ is from God ; Avhatever opposition 
to beauty, whatever defilement is exhibited by it, can not extin- 
guish its vital element ; to say otherwise were Manichean. 
The flower that grows on the battle-field is as truly the work 
of God, and as peifectly reveals His beauty, as the flower that 
v/reaths the Christian cottage ; the beauty, where it is real, 
which has been seen and sung of by a Byron or a Shelley, 
may be taken by the Christian, with clear open mind, as a 
plant of God's rearing, though on an unwilling human soil. 

The evil one must be beaten into his own grounds, and per- 
mitted to vindicate as his no spot of the territory of our Father. 
The earth was cursed in its relation to man ; it was degraded 
from what it was to Adam, a grand written scroll — ^its words 
the cloud, and flower, and mountain, the light by which it was 
read that of the sun and stars — wherein, as his own heart 
thrilled with the angelic joy that springs from rapt sym- 
pathy with loveliness, he saw the glory and the beauty of 
God, into a field and workshop of toil, where man can not 
rise on the wings of pure emotion, into the heaven of love- 
liness, because of the brassy dome of labor. Yet the lilies 
of the field were not cursed in themselves or made less beau- 
tiful ; their beauty was only vailed from men, so that they 
saw it not, nor were moved by it to a sacred joy ; and 
we may be absolutely certain, both that every thrill of 
rapture awakened in us by true beauty is a noble emotion, 
and that, when our nature is restored to what it was, or raised 
higher than before, a beauty will beam upon us from every 
part of God's universe, till then scarce dreamed of 

Foster's conception of the fallen state of human nature, sha- 
dowing as it did the whole range of his opinions, led him into 
views respecting the means available and hopeful for the 
amelioration of humanity, which seem to us of so dangerous 



S5C JOHN FOSTER. 

tendencj as to require a word of comment. He looked for 
light from heaven, in a way in which it is not now, we think, 
to be expected, and in which it would do little good if it came. 
Casting his eye upon man as an agency for the regeneration 
of the world, his feeling of the depth of human corruption made 
him almost turn from the reforming teacher or preacher in 
despair. True, as we have seen, he never flinched, but he con- 
sidered the world so bad, that no terrestrial mechanism hitherto 
known could save ; he desired, therefore, and expected, visible 
supernatural assistance. It is interesting to observe the eager- 
ness with which he grasps at any appearance of supernatural 
influence, to account for an extraordinay religious movement ; 
the look of suspicion with which he regards any act of general 
heroism is by no means so pleasing. He strongly insinuates 
supernatural aid in the case of Whitefield ; perhaps the coldest 
and smallest remark he ever made, and that with the spirit of 
which we least sympathize, is that in which he seems to cling 
to the idea that the ministers of the Church of Scotland who 
left their manses in 1843 would flinch when it came to the 
point. Foster had by no means an adequate idea of man, of 
his countless capabilities and countless diversities ; hovf, bor- 
rowing a hint from a clever writer, one might say he suggested 
the idea of a cross between an angel and a demon ; how the 
heaven-light and the hell-light mingle in his eye. And, for 
one thing, he had no clear idea of the mighty influence of 
man on man. He looked, to use his own words, for "the 
interference of angelic, or some other extraordinary and yet 
unknown agency." 

The influence, both for good and evil, that may be exerted 
by man upon man, it were extremely difficult to overrate. 
The light from the human eye flashes along a column in the 
battle-day lit 5 a gleam of sunlight on the bayonets ; read the 



JOHN FOSTER. 357 

history of the " L ttle Corporal," and you will know that to be 
a fact. The light of the human eye will set continents ablaze 
for centuries ; read the history of Moharamecl and Islam for 
the proof of that. That light will bring the men of one half of 
the world upon those of another, as the moon leads the vast 
tidal wave of ocean ; witness Peter and his Crusades. Think of 
the influence of Luther on the world, and of Whitefield upon 
immense bodies of men ; think of the sway of Knox in Scot- 
land, and of his true successor, Chalmers ; reflect, in a word, 
upon human history in its whole course ; and own the irresis- 
tible force of the conviction that the human eye and voice are 
the mightiest agencies which have acted there, whether directly 
as instruments of the Highest, or indirectly as such. Super- 
natural agency for the regeneration of the world we distinctly 
look for ; but we apprehend that such agency will not neces- 
sarily be in any other sense than it is in the conversion of every 
believer. Conceive the effect of a band of men with the ardor, 
the rapt earnestness, the immovable valor of Paul, and the 
sacred enthusiasm of John ; by the laws of human nature, they 
would move the world as it has never yet been moved ; and 
what, save such grace as may be drawn down by prayer, do 
Christians now require to be such? Our Saviour set the 
human forever on a level with visible supernatural agency, by 
His declaration that, " If men heard not Moses and the Proph- 
ets, neither would they be persuaded though one I'ose from 
the dead." This truth is of very grave import ; for, if it is 
our first duty to avail ourselves of all aid to be had, it is our 
second to ascertain in what case to look for aid is hopeless. 

We shall draw to a close our exceptions to Foster's teach- 
ing, by a brief glance at the subject of amusements. These, 
as is well known, were, on the whole, an eyesore to him : even 
the sports and dances of children he looked on with a scowl of 



358 JOHN FOSTER. 

disapprova<,and discontent. It was not, indeed, always so ; of 
that we have had satisfactory proof: but he did not feel at rest 
respecting them ; any appearance of lightness, any approach to 
frivolity, in such an earnest world as ours, he could not sanc- 
tion with the kind indulgence of sympathy. He saw what was 
bad in amusements, but not what was good ; he perceived not 
the end they serve in the present economy, if not perfect or 
altogether excellent themselves, in yet averting worse evils, 
and at lowest finding something harmless for idle hands and 
feet to do. He fixed his eye too exclusively on the hollowness 
of worldly courtesy, and while he sneered it away he told us 
not what to put in its place. The present fabric of society is, 
indeed, crazy and infirm, rottenness in its rafters, flaws in its 
iron-work, cracks in its pillars ; but all must be better and 
stronger ere these can be dispensed with ; pull them out with 
the rash hand now, and all will go into a heap of rubbish. 

What is the rationale of noble amusem.ent 1 what its method 
and what its end ? In the mirthful meeting, it is intended, and 
should be, so far as is possible, attained, that the social instincts 
come into healthful and cheering play, that the latent fire of 
affection for our brethren and sisters, simjoly as such, by, as it 
were, the pleasing friction of concourse and converse, evolve 
itself on all faces in genial smiling or free laughter ; that the 
frame, physical and psychal, sportively unbend itself without 
sinking into torpor, drawing refreshment and invigoration from 
a certain active rest, midway between sleep and labor. Such 
is needful for poor man, and nature has kindly given it. 

Three radical errors, in three respective ways, may vitiate 
the philosophic perfection of amusement. The entertainment 
may be simply and exclusively animal ; then it is ignoble in 
man : it may be simply mental ; then it defeats its purpose : 
it may be destitute of true kindness, of trustful, friendly con- 



JOHN FOSTER. 359 

fidence ; then it is false. This is self-evident and irreversible, 
and thus may all amusement be tried. 

How do our public ball-rooms and large formal dancing- 
parties stand the test ? Not remarkably well. Genuine geni- 
ality is well-nigh absent. The kindness consists in becks, and 
bows, and ceremonies ; in lispings, and simpers, and smiles ; 
all of which were accurately put down in the dancing-master's 
bill. It is a farce, better or worse played, in which men and 
women act kindness. It is also highly distinctive of the place 
that mind is wanting. Was it not Hook who observed that 
dancing and intellect are in our island in an inverse ratio % It 
was a shrewd remark ; and one thing upon which frequenters 
of ball-rooms, of both sexes, seem unanimous, is that the par- 
ticular persons with w^hom they have happened to dance were 
remarkably silly. In plain truth, the entertainment must be 
put in comparison with those of the lower animals. All the 
inferior tribes have their amusements. Crows wheel round in 
the sky, sweeping in full circle, evidently in joyous sport ; kit- 
tens and dogs are familiar examples ; donkeys, be it known, 
are remarkable frisky, when it is their own amusement they 
have to attend to ; even sheep have been observed clumsily 
gambolling and kicking about in their thick woolly vestures, 
and have suggested the idea of a ball-room of ladies and gen- 
tlemen threading the wreathed dance in flannel -dressing gowns. 
Now we distinctly allow that the entertainments of a ball-room 
ma}^ produce that swiftened gallop of the blood, and consequent 
exhilaration of animal spirits, which, we presume, attend the 
sports of the sheep and the donkey ; and the music and Cham- 
pagne may be allowed, in philosophic fairness, to set the ball- 
room, considered as a place of animal sport, perceptibly above 
the playgrounds of the last-mentioned creatures : but, since we 
are thus liberal, we will be permitted to say that, when you 



360 JOHN FOSTER. 

have no friendliness, no all-pervasive play of mirth, no unlaced 
ease and freedom, when you stand to each other merely in the 
relation of necessaries to the dance, the pleasure, however 
heightened, is animal in essence and ignoble. 

Relaxing amusement, however, is noble and proper, when- 
ever it bides the test we have proposed. When you can trust- 
fully grasp the hand extended to yours ; when you know the 
smile on the lip that addresses you to be the speechless voice 
of the viewless spirit of kindness ; when you can be assured 
that the tongue, now tuned to soft geniality and friendliness, 
will not to-morrow slander your name ; when mirth flows in 
its natural channels, and trustful heart leaps in sympathy with 
trustful heart ; then all is right. And if, in such an assem- 
blage, the joyous exhilaration will be increased by moving to 
harmonious sound, with gestures of beauty and vivacious 
grace, let no one object to the dance ; the buoyant leaping of the 
blood is nature's, the laws of beauty in sound and sight are 
nature's — who can say they are wrong ? The rain falls no 
less cheeringly because the sunbeams painted the clouds with 
gold and vermilion ; industry and action flourish all the better, 
for this sporting in the sunlight of mirth and gladness. 

We seriously invite all persons to consider the essential ac- 
cordance of this with Christianity, with the example of our Master. 
Never smile passed from human countenance as He entered the 
abode, never child ceased to frolic because He was near. We 
speak most seriously, deliberately, and reverently, when we say 
that if, in the degenerate state of the Jews at the time, they still 
retained any noble melodies commemorative of the days and 
deeds of the first Asmoneans, He would have listened while they 
were sung without commanding silence, and sanctioned by His 
sacred approval the flow of manly mirth. Because worldly amuse- 
ment, as we in general find it, is unworthy of men, let us not for- 



JOHN FOSTER. 301 

get that the relaxing and yet reinvigorating enjoyments of social 
entertainment were never frowned upon by Him whose sympa- 
thy embraced every thing beautiful and true in this universe. 

It will be remarked that we have in no way restricted true 
lawful amusement to one form. Our tests exclude all that 
ought to be excluded, but make room for all else. In the 
freest and best relaxation, the heart will naturally turn to what 
draws it most, and the devout Christian may find every essen- 
tial of recreating social enjoyment in sharing with others the 
feelmgs of gratitude or irrepressible love to his God which fill 
his bosom. As true recreation, as pure enjoyment, may be 
derived froro the sharing of Christian feelings, as from any 
other outgoing of the heart, or rather far truer and purer. 
Were the hymns which, at early morning, the primitive Chris- 
tians sung to Jesus less joyful than the bacchantic choruses tliat 
had made night hideous a few hours before 1 Nay, this form 
of enjoyment will ultimately swallow up all others. Mean- 
while, it is bootless to scowl upon amusements ; by no single 
edict can they be removed or reformed. Only let us always 
keep the end in view, and strive to be on the way of improve- 
ment. As the human mind becomes gradually elevated, and 
the human heart gradually deepened, this and many other re- 
forms will come in their season. 

We have thus found not a little to qualify and supplement 
in the works of Foster. It were quite an erroneous idea, how- 
ever, if our exceptions were taken as illustrative of the whole 
tenor of his works, or as testing their general value. We 
mean rather to witness their worth, and aim merely at freeing 
this of excrescence, and making it more accessible. His books 
are precious in a high and perennial sense. You can not read 
any paragraph of them, without perceiving that an earnest and 
lofty mind is at work. Earnestness was perhaps his distin- 

16 



362 JOHX FOSTER. 

guishing characteristic ; over his very page you seem to see 
bending the knit bro\y and indomitable eye of the thinker. 
This man, you feel, is conscious that it is a great and awful 
thing to be alive — to be born to that dread inheritance of duty 
and destiny which awaits every spirit of man that arrives on 
earth. He shakes from him the dust of custom ; he little 
heeds the sanctions of reputation ; afar off and very still, com- 
pared with a voice coming from above, he hears the trumpet- 
ings of fame : calm, determined, irresistible, his foot ever 
seems to press down till it reaches the basal adamant. This 
earnestness is made the more impressive from the manifest 
leaning of his mind toward the gloomy and mysterious. Of 
habits of thought deeply reflective, he retired as it were into 
the inner dwelling of his mind, there to ponder the insoluble 
questions of destiny ; like dim curtains, painted with shapes 
of terror, of gloom, and of w^ierd grandeur, that hang round 
a dusky hall, waving fitfully in the faint light, these questions 
seem to us to have hung round his mind, filling it all with 
solemn shadow : he looked on them as on mystic hieroglyphs, 
but when he asked their secret, they remained silent as Isis ; 
he ever turned away, saying, in baffled pride, I will compel 
your answer in eternity, yet always turned again, fascinated 
by their sublime mystery, and stung by their calm defiance. 
No word of frivolity escapes him ; he tells men sternly what 
they have to dare, and do, and suffer ; he never says the bur- 
den is light or the foe weak, but the one must be borne and 
the other must be met. You feel in perusing his works as in 
going through a rugged region, where nature, forgetting her 
gentler moods, desires to write npon the tablet of the world 
her lessons of solemnity and of power ; you perceive that only 
hardy plants can breathe this atmosphere, that here no Arca- 
dian lawns can smile, no Utopian palaces arise; there awakens 



JOHN FOSTER. 363 

in you that courage, you seem to be conscious of that sense of 
greatness, which the strong soul knows in the neighborhood of 
crags and forests, where the torrent blends its stern murmur 
with the music of the mountain blast. 

Poster is to us one of the best representatives of the literary 
Christian priesthood which is arising in these days. He did 
not leave his Christianity in the pulpit ; in his every book, 
and his every article, he speaks as one fully conscious that, by 
ceasing to preach his religion, he has not obtained any dispen- 
sation from the duty of proclaiming it. If asked to indicate 
what we would deem a fair specimen of that Christianized lite- 
rature, to which we earnestly look as to a fountain of blessed- 
ness for these latter times, we know not whither we could 
point with more decision than to John Foster's contributions 
to the Eclectic Review. 

It can not, perhaps, be alleged that there is any positively 
new revelations of truth to be exhibited from the writings of 
Foster. But they have the originality of spirit and the origin- 
ality of application : the grain is the ancient grain of Christian 
truth, of manly sentiment, and of free loyalty ; but it has 
grown green in the showers of a new spring, and yellow un- 
der the suns of a new summer, and it yields a rich harvest, 
wholesome and pleasant as before, for the food of man. In an 
age when severe teaching was perhaps more than usually re- 
quired, he recalled the public mind to those stern aspects and 
realities of our lot which it is never well to forget. His en- 
forcement of the great doctrine of human depravity is in itself 
sufficient to render his works permanently valuable. And he 
was perhaps the first distinctly to apprehend and point out 
how certain of the great influences of the age are to be dealt 
with : he fiirly understood the French Revolution, and pro- 
claimed the necessity of universal education. 



364 JOHN FOSTER. 

To criticise his separate works is beyond our scope, and 
were quite superfluous. His style, even in its ultimate form, 
was unquestionably and definably defective. It never became 
capable of expressing delicate, sprightly, or buoyant emotion ; 
it wants variety, light graceful force, easy-stepping familiar 
elegance ; it has always something of an elephantine tread, and 
its gayety is apt to remind one rather of the jingling of an ele- 
phant's trappings, than of the laughter of children : or, to 
change the figure, it never spreads out into wide islanded shal- 
lows, rippling to the breeze and sparkling in the sunbeams, 
but is always a massive, stately, slow-rolling river. Yet it 
possesses very rare and excellent qualities. It is remarkably 
rich and expressive ; you can not skim along it. Almost 
strangely, too, considering its mass, it is by no means fatigu- 
ing. Continually and unexpectedly, as if nourished by hidden 
fountains, the flowers of a deeply poetic nature bloom forth on 
the page. And though it can not be said to possess sprightli- 
ness, yet there is not wanting a pleasant caustic wit, a quiet, 
earnest humor. Foster possessed a true vein of humor. 
Perhaps no style so deeply serious was ever so widely 
popular. 

We have entirely abstained from speaking of Foster's pri- 
vate life. His biography, however partial, must be that of a 
thinker ; his external life was that of a thousand Englishmen. 
He was a shrewd, somewhat sarcastic, but friendly man, lov- 
ing his friends and social converse, and deeply happy in his 
family. He excelled in conversation when in a genial atmos- 
phere, and specially when any friend whom he loved and 
honored— Hall, Fawcett, Hughes, or such other — was present. 
He took a deep interest in politics, lending all his influence to 
the side of freedom. 

We noticed Foster's marriage ; we may venture to cast one 



JOHN FOSTER. 365 

look upon him as he lays his Maria, mourning, in the grave. 
It wa? in 1832, and he was now sinking into the vale of years : 
we think no description of the joy of a long married life, where 
perfect love and perfect friendship have blended mortal and 
immortal joys in one pure harmony, could so pathetically body 
forth its felicity as the following words, written by him when 
first the light of the present drew away, to rest, like a sunset, 
on the past : — " I have returned hither^ but have an utter re- 
pugnance to say — returned /iome; that name is applicable no 
longer. . . . There is a weight on the heart which the 
most friendly human hand can not remove. The melancholy 
fact is, that my beloved, inestimable companion has left me. 
It comes upon me — in evidence how various and sad ! And 
yet, for a moment, sometimes I feel as if I could not realize it 
as true. There is something that seems to say, can it be that 
I shall see her no more ; that I shall still, one day after 
another, find she is not here, that her affectionate voice and look 
will never accost me ; the kind grasp of her hand never more 
be felt ; that when I would be glad to consult her, make an 
observation to her, address to her some expression of love, call 
her ' my dear wife,' as I have done so many thousand times, 
it will be in vain — she is not here 1 Several times, a con- 
siderable number, even since I followed her to the tomb, a 
naomentary suggestion of thought has been, as one and another 
circumstance has occurred, ' I will tell Maria of this.' " One 
treads with silence and tears in the sacred neighborhood of 
such a sorrow. 

As Foster's life drew near its end, the sadness which had 
ever characterized him became more deep. He never wavered 
in his trust in God, but he felt ever the more profoundly that 
this world was one of sorrow and darkness ; he looked wist- 
fully into the future, pondering upon the intermediate state 



366 JOHN FOSTER. 

and such subjects ; he walked sadly and solemnly gathering up 
questions for eternity. 

At last he came to die: it was October, 1844. On his 
death-bed he showed the same tremulous sensibility to the 
distress or annoyance of others as had always characterized 
him. He would permit no servant to sit up with him during 
the night, and if it was insisted upon, he could not sleep ; the 
fact is little in itself, but of singular interest in the case of 
Foster. 

The substantial peace which he had attained did not desert 
him in his dying hours. He died as one can die who has well 
acquitted him in the far sterner duty of living a true and godly 
life. As he felt his strength gradually stealing away, he re- 
marked on his increasing weakness, and added, " But I can 
pray, and that is a glorious thing." Truly a glorious thing ; 
more glorious than atheist or pantheist can even pretend to. 
To look up to an Om^nipotent Father, to speak to Him, to 
love Him ; to stretch upward as a babe from the cradle, that 
He may lift His child in his everlasting arms to the resting- 
place of His own bosom ; this is the portion of the dying 
Christian. He was overheard thus speaking with himself: 
" O death, where is thy sting 1 O grave, where is thy victory ? 
Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ !" The eye of the terror-crowned was upon 
him, and thus he defied him. 



CHAPTER III 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 



About the beginning of this centurj^ a little boy might have 
been seen playing in a garden at West Cowes, Isle of Wight. 
The name of Napoleon and the din and rumor of war filled 
the air around him : his keen eyes brightened and sparkled 
continually, as they looked out upon martial pomp and prepar- 
ation. The sight of the great war-ship entering the harbor, or 
bearing away to meet the foe ; the news of battle and victory ; 
the loud, loyal choruses of mariners, who stepped and looked 
with the consciousness of ruling the waves : these, mingling 
with the kindly tones and melodies of a Christian home, which 
softened every harshness and discord into a musical harmony, 
were the earliest influences to mold the young mind of 
Thomas Arnold. Though naturally bashful, the child was yet, 
so to speak, intensely alive, in body and mind. He got hold 
of Pope's Homer, and the many voices of war around him 
strengthened its influence ; it was one of his favorite amuse- 
ments, to enact the Homeric battles, with staves and garden 
implements for swords and spears, reciting, with a great sense 
of the valor and grandeur of the proceeding, the speeches of 
the heroes of Homer, that is, of Pope. At eight, he went to 
Warminster School, at twelve, to Winchester ; in each he 
showed sympathetic intensity of intellect, heart and head act- 
ing strongly and in unison. He displayed great warmth in 



368 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

his boyish friendships. Ere proceeding to Oxford, which he 
did at sixteen, his information had extended widely. He had 
read Gibbon and Mitford twice, and was well acquainted with 
Russel's Modern Europe ; he knew also, to a considerable ex- 
tent, the historians of Greece and Rome ; his bent, it was 
already manifest, was toward geography and history. 

Arnold entered at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 181 1 ; 
it was an important epoch in his life, and his whole sojourn at 
the university is full of interest. The society in Corpus was 
select ; and during Arnold's career it embraced young men of 
an extremely high and rare order ; such, for instance, as 
Whateley, Heber, and Keble. He was an important member 
of the fraternity. He represented the healthful, well-balanced, 
daringly active English mind ; instinct with sympathies that 
swept beyond academic walls to expatiate in the wide world ; 
fond of poetry, and ardently affectionate, yet shrewd, discrim- 
inating, and burning his way through words to things. The 
air a-t Oxford was such as breathes through the Hall of the 
Past, and the great body of the students of Corpus, each in his 
several manner, loved and reverenced what was old ; but Ar- 
nold was for freedom and advancement, and rebelled against 
the genius of the place. Yet, one by one, the nobler of his 
fellow-students came to know him and to love him ; into one 
true heart after another he threw his invisible grappling-iron, 
and linked it to his for life. Corpus was a little senate in 
itself, where all the big questions of the day were discussed ; 
and he was an active and vehement disputant. We can im- 
agine him appearing at times even overbearing, but it was 
only when he was himself overborne by his subject. He could 
not hold an opinion by halves ; if it entered his heart at all, it 
was received with the warm welcome of hospitality, and 
served and defended at all risks. He was to be seen in the 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 369 

midst of a circle of the best men of Corpus, combating valiant- 
ly and cheerily for his own views against them all. The logi- 
cal arguer would urge the danger of cutting the moorings of 
society, and drifting off on the revolutionary sea; but he 
would answer that it was only conservatism which transmuted 
harmonious change into colliding revolution : the Tory loyalist, 
whose father was In Parliament, might expatiate on the glories 
of the throne and the nobility, as the ramparts of a nation ; 
out he would briefly answer, I love the people, and feudalism 
was wrong in its very idea: and then, in mild accents, might 
Keble evoke a faint cloud of golden dust from the treasuries 
of the past ; and this he would summarily lay with some cold 
water from the wells of his favorite Aristotle. Yet his warm 
sympathies could not resist the strong and kindly influence of 
the place, and he became somewhat more conservative. 

Of his religious feelings during his abode at Corpus, we have 
slight information. His reading led him to Barrow, Hooker, 
and Taylor, and his heart was opened by natural nobleness to 
the more profound and enduring influence of Christian truth. 
His disposition was devout, his morals pure ; further we can 
not declare. 

Altogether, the university career of Arnold is to be pro- 
nounced auspicious. If his scholarship was not what is tech- 
nically called profound, it was yet thorough and comprehen- 
sive: he was not ignorant of words; but that hungry instinct 
of reality within him, with which it was vain to contend, called 
resistlessly for things. He won the prize for two essays, Latin 
and English; he became intimately and sympathizingly ac- 
quainted with ancient history ; and he drank in the wisdom of 
Aristotle with almost passionate enthusiasm. But the most 
benignant of all the influences which encircled him at the uni- 
versity, was assuredly the friendship of such as Keble, Whatc- 



370 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 



ley, and Justice Coleridge. These friendships were cherished 
by him during life, with the earnestness of duty and the en- 
thusiasm of love. It is a beautiful and inspiring spectacle to 
behold the several friends, as from their respective stations 
they send kindly and life-long greetings to each other; like 
vessels in one fleet sailing toward the dawn, that hang out 
lamps of signal and comfort, to point the way and break the 
darkness. 

Just as he was about to emerge from the years of youth 
and education to those of manhood and performance, Arnold's 
mind became more deeply moved than it had hitherto been on 
the subject of religion. He remained at the university for four 
years after ceasing to be a gownsman. During these it was 
that his mind passed through a discipline of doubt, which 
finally resulted in the establishment of his character on a Chris- 
tian basis, in what he would have defined as his conversion. 
The precise stages of this all-important occurrence we are un- 
able in his case to trace; but his ultimate attainment was 
clear and decisive, the general method of his reaching it is per- 
fectly ascertainable, and the lessons conveyed in it to similar 
inquirers, together with its testimony to the truth of Chris 
tianity, invaluable. 

The special subject of his questioning was, as in the case of 
Foster, the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. His belief on 
the point appears to have been confirmed by two great argu- 
ments : first, that the attempts made by those who rejected the 
doctrine to find for their views a warrant in Scripture, were the 
mere mockery of criticism; and, second, that the abstraction 
to which deism gives the name of God, leaves all-unsatisfied in 
the human soul that sublime craving which is its distinguishing 
glory, that yearning pain which finds solace only in communion 
with the Divine. In order to his findins^ the former of these 



THOMAS ARNOLD. SYl 

arguments conclusive, it was necessary that he should consider 
the testimony of Scripture final in the matter ; and the ques- 
tion arises, What were the grounds on which he received the 
Bible as the word of the living God ? The answer we are en- 
abled to render, not perhaps precisely given at this period, and 
gathered by us not from any single declaration uttered at any 
one time, but from the tenor of his whole writings, is singularly 
satisfactory. It is on all hands conceded that his historical 
acumen was piercing : his most obvious characteristics were 
clear shrewdness, and sharp-cutting English sense; he had 
trained himself to investigate ancient writings by constant 
study from his boyish days of Greek and Roman authors ; 
and, in the early vigor of his powers, he sat down at the feet 
of Niebuhr, to listen to his teaching with intense and increas- 
ing appreciation, and to learn to infuse into English historical 
thinking the irresistible penetration and clearness of that great 
critic. He approached the Scriptures precisely as he did any 
other composition handed down from ancient times ; he applied 
to them that searching criticism which separated the chaff from 
the wheat in Livy, and unraveled the intricacies of Thucydides , 
and he found conclusive evidence that they were the word of 
God. 

The reader may, perhaps, in reading the Biography of John 
Sterling by Mr. Carlyle, have been struck with the effect pro- 
duced upon the mind of the former by the perusal of Strauss's 
Life of Jesus. Sterling remarked, that, whatsoever men were 
going to, it was plain enough what they were going from ; this 
German book, one is apt to conclude from his words, was to 
deal the finally shattering blow to all Christian institutions ; 
the ears of the world, you suppose, are deafened with the 
rum^r of it, the sky darkened by its mighty shade. Of the 
same book, Arnold wrote as follows: — 



3*12 THlMAS ARNOLD. 

" What a strange work Strauss's Leben Jesus appears to me, 
judging of it from the notices in the ' Studien und Kritiken.' 
It seems to me to show the ill effects of that division of labor 
which prevails so much among the learned men of Germany. 
Strauss writes about history and myths, without appearing to 
have studied the question, but having heard that some pre- 
tended histories are mythical, he borrows this notion as an en- 
gine to help him out of Christianity. But the idea of men 
writing mythic histories between the time of Livy and Tacitus, 
and of St. Paul mistaking such for realities !" 

Thus it is that the matter appears to one really trained in 
historical induction. There is no " Coleridgean moonshine" in 
that eye ! He sweeps through painted mist and carefully- 
woven cobweb, right to the heart of the question. It is to no 
fond dreaming enthusiasm, very beautiful, it may be, but very 
weak, that he commits himself; he asks no aid from imagina- 
tion, and he does not stop to inquire whether the plain fact, 
which his Saxon intellect demands, is given him by logic or by 
reason ; he wants the fact itself: grasping firmly, therefore, the 
hand of history, he finds his step at once on Judean hills, and 
he is surrounded by men who have the same hearts in their 
breasts, the same earth under their feet, as men in the nine- 
teenth century. He fixes specially his regards upon Paul. 
He sees him trained in the school of Tarsus ; he hears him, in 
calm, earnest, clear, persuasive words, disputing with Grecian 
sages ; he notes that his opinions are so temperate that he be- 
comes all things to all men, that his moral preaching is pure, 
mild, and thorough, that his zeal is stronger than death ; he 
perceives that his every earthly prospect is blasted, his good, 
hopes of advancement, under the smile of high priest and 
Pharisee, turned into certainty of bitter hatred, his life rendered 
one scene of hardship, danger, and poverty, by his belief in the 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 373 

divine mission of a certain Teacher ; he observes that he com- 
panies with men who declare that, a few years before, they 
saw this Teacher pass upward into heaven, and had witnessed 
his raising of the dead while He went in and out among them. 
All is real, present, visible ; there is none of the dimness of 
antiquity, the seclusion of mystery ; these men sit there in 
Judea, unimpassioned, earnest, unanimous ; there is in the 
whole scene no analogy the most distant to aught resembling 
a myth ; the gospel they proclaim is love and truth, the dan- 
ger they face is death, the motive they can have, on the hy- 
pothesis that they are liars, inconceivable, the life they lead, 
the unanimity of their testimony, on the hypothesis they are 
enthusiasts, positive contradictions : as with a stamp of his 
foot, he shakes the whole mythic theory to atoms, as an ab- 
surdity, to accept which were a feat of credulity within the 
powers of no faith save that of infidelity. There is, we think, 
a fine precision in his instant selection of Paul, as affording 
absolutely conclusive means of vindicating the strict historic 
verity of Christianity : the leading facts of Paul's life, as 
eliminated in the Horse Paulinse, are as well established, on 
their own evidence, as those of the life of Calvin ; and if they 
are granted, not only does every mythic theory dissolve like a 
film of vapor, but the first links of a chain are taken into the 
hand, by which it seems to us scarce possible to avoid being 
led believingly to the feet of Jesus. Finding the historical 
evidence of the divine truth of Christianity satisfactory, he 
does not seem to have been able to doubt that Paul, John, and 
the other evangelists, do, with more or less explicitness, avow 
their belief in the divinity of Jesus. To this belief he was 
perhaps partially led, and in it he was certainly confirmed, by 
the second consideration we have mentioned. We deem the 
following an important passage : — 



374 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

" For my own part, considering one great object of God's 
revealing Himself in the Person of Christ to be the furnishing 
us with an object of worship which we could at once love and 
understand ; or, in other words, the supplying safely and 
wholesomely that want in human nature, which has shown 
itself in false religions, in ' making gods after our own devices,' 
it does seem to me to be forfeiting the peculiar benefits thus 
offered, if we persist in attempting to approach to God in his 
own incomprehensible essence, which, as no man hath seen or 
can see, so no man can conceive it. And, while I am most 
ready to allow the provoking and most ill-judged language in 
which the truth, as I hold it to be, respecting God, has been 
expressed by Trinitarians, so, on the other hand, I am inclined 
to think that Unitarians have deceived themselves, by fancying 
that they could understand the notion of one God any better 
than that of God in Christ ; whereas, it seems to me that it is 
only of God in Christ that I can in my present state of being 
conceive any thing at all." Strangely enough, a Unitarian writer 
of the day has quoted from this passage against the doctrine 
of the divinity of our Lord. To us it appears simply the sub- 
scription of a singularly clear, and healthful, and honest mind, 
to that great fact of the human consciousness, which is the 
chief argument deducible from nature in support of the doc- 
trine of the Trinity. It is a virtual appeal to the testimony 
of history, that deism has ever failed to take a real hold of the 
mass of mankind ; that, w^hen strenuously pressed by dialectic, 
its deity has become a confessed inconceivability, the absolute 
nothing of Oken, and that, when left to gain a footing among 
the body of a people, it has taken the thousand forms of poly- 
theism. We will not say that the noblest of the Grecian sages 
pointed at nothing, w'hen he longed for more light, and dimly 
shadowed the Christian Trinity ; even the brow of Plato grew 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 375 

sad under the infinite vault, filled, indeed, ^yith a certain pale 
icy radiance, but having no Sun. Christ came to lift the vail 
of Isis ; to fix the lorn eye of humanity on a known God. 
Arnold, by his revering love of the Saviour, and the satisfaction 
which he declared he experienced for the highest and most pro- 
found longings of his soul in the worship of Him, testified that 
the Desired of the nations had come : through Jesus he could 
commune with God ; holding by the hand of Jesus, he could 
stand unconsumed, as it were, in the very blaze of the throne ; 
instead of seeking in his words an argument in support of Uni- 
tarian views, we find in them one miore proof that there is 
between poor man, lying in troubled slumber on the world- 
desert, and his God, the precipice of an unsealed infinitude, if 
no ladder is let down, if no divine Saviour has come. The 
end of all his doubt was, to use his own form of expression, 
his placing himself consciously under the banner of the Lord 
Jesus, his cleaving to Him, his reposing absolute trust in Him, 
his resolving to become His faithful soldier and servant to 
life's end. Then his mind became calm and strong ; he had, 
as he again says, " a security v>-ithin, a security not of man, 
but of God." 

Arnold now took orders in the Church of England, subscrib- 
ing to her formularies. He professed not to agree with these 
in all things ; he specially di> sented from the Athanasian Creed. 
Of his views on these points he never made a secret, openly 
declaring that no interpretation of the clauses to which he 
objected in the creed just mentioned could bring them into 
accordance with his opinions, and defining his act of subscrip- 
tion to indicate merely a general sympathy with, and willing- 
ness to adhere to the Church of England. AVe have no hesitation 
whatever in thinking that in this he erred. We agree with 
Mr. Greg in believing him to have acted with perfect honesty ; 



376 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

yet we deem his mistake serious. We can not discuss the 
matter here, but we refer the reader, both for its masterly 
treatment, and for what is essentially our view of the subject, 
to Foster's article on the life of Paley. 

Arnold settled first at Laleham, near Staines, with his mother, 
aunt, and sister, proposing to take pupils. Here he remained 
for nine years, his character gradually unfolding, and his views 
becoming matured. He disciplined himself to thorough work, 
and thought much. His eye, during the period, turned with 
ever-increasing earnestness upon the great interests and ques- 
tions of his age and country, and gradually every conservative 
tendency which had attached to him at Oxford was cast off; 
he became the determined, uncompromising foe of every form 
of worship of the past, or attempt to clog the progress of the 
present. His religion, too, went on deepening from year to 
year, he drew closer and closer to God, and to his Friend and 
Saviour Jesus ; and, more and more, the fruits of the Spirit 
beamed forth in thought, feeling, and action. At Laleham he 
married, and here six of his nine children were born. 

At length Arnold was elected, in a marked and flattering 
manner, to the head mastership of Rugby. He was then 
thirty -three years of age ; in the very prime of life. He con- 
tinued to occupy this post until his death, and here it was that 
he became so widely known and valued as a practical thinker 
and reformer. We desire to throw out before the eye of the 
reader a whole general picture of his life, for it is so alone that 
an adequate idea can be formed regarding it ; one or two of 
his more remarkable opinions we will hereafter briefly glance 
at. 

The first look at Arnold's career reveals a very important 
circumstance ; one which constituted a main element in his 
character, and exerted a great influence in molding his career. 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 877 

It is impossible to regard him for a moment, without perceiv- 
ing the intensity of his physical life. We have seen this in 
his early days ; it continued to characterize him to the last. 
It made labor a positive pleasure ; it sent him to the mountain 
side with ever fresh delight ; it impelled him resistlessly to 
the work before and around him. Acting the Homeric battles 
in his father's garden, scampering over the fields at Oxford, 
bathing and boating with his pupils, he is ever the same 
intensely alive, joyous being. It is seen in his face ; he looks 
as if he were watching the moments in their flight, eager to 
grasp them ; his eye reminds us of the good Ritter Hagen's of 
" the rapid glances ;" his lips are compressed and firm, as if 
closed after the utterance of one clear unalterable No, which 
Coleridge could not say ; there is strength in his firm unquiv- 
ering cheek, in his iron brows, in his unwrinkled forehead. 
His intensity overthrows every thing, even literary delicacy ; 
" I must write a pamphlet, or I will burst," he says ; we think 
we see him gasping with earnestness as he utters the words. 
We find it likewise in his valor and open-fiiced independence. 
He longs to fight the Oxford heretics, " as in a saw-pit." And 
he has a clear sympathy for the nobleness of the battle-field, think- 
ing no man can be of sound human feelings without sharing it. 
Directing attention to the sphere in which this tireless 
energy worked, and the modes in which it exhibited itself, we 
are called first to observe him as a teacher. Both in theory 
and practice he is here admirable. The objects he aimed at 
in education may be summed up in two words — character, 
power. By the first of these we mean complete self-estimating, 
self-respecting manhood; by the second, that harmonious 
development of each fiiculty of the mind, that raising of each 
capacity into the condition in which it can naturally, health- 
fully, and perfectly perform its function, which is attainable 



378 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 



by intellectual culture. He avoided, on the one hand, the 
fallacy, that a man is not fitly educated unless he is made mas- 
ter of the powers, we say not the acquirements, of a scholar ; 
that, for instance, a man of slight intellectual faculty, like How- 
ard, may not be as thoroughly educated in character, as a man 
of high intellectual faculty like Bentley ; he shunned, on the 
other hand, the far more palpable, but extremely common 
error, which surely has exerted an unsuspected influence in our 
modern educational improvements, that education consists 
mainly in conveying a certain amount of information into the 
mind. 

We find this statement embodied in two brief but compre- 
hensive expressions quoted from Arnold by Mr. Stanley : first, 
" If there be any thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is 
to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, 
where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultiva- 
ted :" second, " It is not knowledge but the means of gaining 
knowledge, which I have to teach." 

As his theory of education was philosophic in its soundness 
and width, his practice of tuition may be characterized in one 
word as marked by its totality ; it embraced him as a whole ; 
it was in his step, and eye, and tone, and much which can not 
be even indicated ; the pupils saw that their teacher was a 
true man and Christian; the grasp of his energy they felt 
upon them ; they knew not how, but the very air seemed per- 
vaded by his influence. 

That continual watchfulness and readiness of mind, that 
never flagging energy, that clearness and compactness of 
knowledge, and that genial sympathizing insight into the 
youthful mind, which are demanded in the practical teacher, 
were his in unusual measure. And his success was propor- 
tioned to his merits. His pupils were inspired with a fine- 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 3*79 

sympathy with himself in carrying on the business of the 
school ; accustomed to be treated as Christian gentlemen 
whose word was not to be called in question, they learned 
to shrink from meanness, to acquire self-command, and to 
make intelligence and ncMeness their aims ; at the univer- 
sity, youths from other quarters might excel in the quick- 
ness, the cleverness, and, it might even at times happen, 
the minute accuracy, of school-boys ; those from Kugby 
had the character, the thought, the deliberate purpose, of 
men. 

But the expansive energies of Arnold could not confine 
themselves to the school. Around him lay the world in a 
stirring and tumultuous epoch, with its questions to be answer- 
ed, and its work to be done. He was not a man to be struck 
dumb by the one, or confounded by the other. Christian him- 
self in every pulse of his being, believing in Christianity as a 
truth, knowing it as a life, and recognizing its claim to pervade 
with its influence every province of human affairs, he bent all 
his energies to effect that reform which it professes its power 
to work in nations. We speak not now of his particular 
views ; we look merely at his attitude and aim. And these 
present a spectacle of Christian thoroughness and valor which 
must stir every heart attuned to high impulses. He knows 
no fear, he will listen to no compromise. To the world he 
seems even turbulent ; for he can not breathe the same atmos- 
phere with error, but must instantly unsheath his sword, and 
rush against it : there is a flash of real war-horse fire in his 
eye ; he yearns for the battle. Words fall from him which a 
man may seize and treasure up, as a sort of diamond-dust for 
whetting and burnishing his mental armory. " I do not under- 
stand how the times can help bearing what an honest man has 
the resolution to do !" Ha ! The opposition of the wicked to 



380 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

Christianity and the Christian ministry, he regards as satis- 
factory, and even consoling — the only testimony in their favor 
which it is in the po^Yer of such to give. He feels that it is a 
grand thing to fight the devil, when one's mind is fairly m;:^le 
up as to the identity of the foe. " The work here is more aid 
more engrossing continually ; but I like it better and better : 
it has all the interest of a great game of chess, with living 
creatures for pawns and pieces, and your adversary, in plain 
English, the devil," etc. This is a different attitude from Fos- 
ter's, though that, too, was sublime. Foster looked over the 
field where the forces of the enemy were ranged, and gazed 
into the eyes of their "great commander," with stern defiance, 
indeed, but with a tear of burning grief that the positions of 
the field were in his hands ; Arnold's eye flashes right in his 
face with utter defiance, but also with a certain blasting gleam 
of triumphant contempt; he longs only to come to close 
quarters, and, with the sword and the shield given him from 
heaven's armory, wrest the victory from the prince of the 
world. It is alwaj^s the word " onward " that he speaks ; 
it is ever higher that he will have the banner float ; God and the 
angels may be spectators, but, for us. up, brothers, and at them ! 
Arnold was singularly true to that type of character which 
is recognized as in a peculiar sense English ; he embodied its 
indomitable energy, its unj)retending honesty, its practical 
sense. In doing work he will be unmatched ; but he must 
clearly see what is the work to be done. When he reaches 
the Gallic invasion in his Roman history, he must commence 
the study of the Erse language ; but he never finds his footing 
sure among the abstractions of metaphysics or even of mathe- 
matics. He attacks the evil that lies to his hand. He pre- 
fers, in conversation, a man who differs from him to one who 
agrees, because some work may then be done, and they end 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 381 

not exactly where they began. He claims no right or power 
to rule the empire of the air, and radically lacks the faculty 
of building air-carriages for a lifetime. With what is deemed 
dullness in Germany and sense in England, " before a confessed 
and unconquerable difficulty his mind reposed as quietly as in 
possession of a discovered truth." 

In strict and beautiful accordance with the general firmness 
and health of his distinctively English character, was the love 
of nature which, he displayed. It was not that sympathy 
which gives full occupation to the soul, and becomes the busi- 
ness of a life ; which casts over nature a spirit-woven web, 
of sentiment and fantasy, more faintly aerial and more 
delicately tinted than a vail of gossamer, and kindling to the 
eye such new and wondrous colors, that men gather round its 
possessor, and hail him a poet. He could not anywise 
sympathize with Wordsworth when he said, that the meanest 
flower that lived awoke within him thoughts that were too 
deep for tears. This, he felt, was a little too ethereal, the 
spire melting into the mist, the strong, clear glance of a manly 
love fading into the filmy gaze of one that dreamed. But per- 
haps none ever illustrated with finer precision that strong and 
healthful sympathy with nature, which is a desirable, if not in- 
dispensable element in every complete and harmonious charac- 
ter; that unaflTected delight in the beautiful, which sheds a 
dewy and flowery freshness over earnest devotion to the good, 
and wreathes with a green garland the brow that inflexibly en- 
deavors after the true ; a power to hear, and to blend with the 
practical energy of life, those unnumbered lessons which are 
inscribed on nature's varied pageantry, and which we can not 
doubt that God intended us to read. With the healthful, re- 
joicing, boyish affection, of an intensely alive and happy na- 
ture, he expatiated in the m-agnificent home which God had 



382 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

hung out in the heavens for His creature man. He did not 
look upon it, as it is the duty and high privilege of the poet to 
do, with the feeling that it was his work to reveal its wonders, 
and, by a melody that leads captive every heart, turn the 
eyes of men to behold it ; but he never ceased to look upon it 
with the eye of one who felt that he worked better in the con- 
sciousness that he dwelt in such a home, and knew that to the 
unstopped ear of man, as he marches on the general journey 
of life, there arises, from stream, and rock, and wood, and 
gentle fountain, a choral melody, to inspire, to tranquilize, to 
gladden. It was just the ordinary English love of fields, and 
hills, and sunbeams, sublimed into intensity. His eye kindles 
grandly as he sees the sun pouring his broad, bright, parting 
smile over the Grampians, seeming to " tread on thrones ;" he 
has watched the Alps at eventide, and remembers forever the 
sublime appearance of their peaks " upon a sky so glowing 
with the sunset, that, instead of looking white from their snow, 
they were like the teeth of a saw upon a plate of red-hot iron, 
all deep and black ;" he has never done looking at the great 
running rivers, which he regards as the most beautiful objects 
in nature ; the wild-flowers on the mountain sides are, he tells 
us, his music ; it is Arnold in his kindliest, but not least 
characteristic aspect, that we see, as we mark him walking by 
his wife's pony in sunny English afternoons, watching every 
phenomenon of nature, and doubling his joy by the sympathy 
of his own Mary. 

To form an adequate idea of the nature of Arnold's relig- 
ious life, it is necessary to conceive fully that which was its 
central point, his close, conscious, and ever realized union and 
friendship with the Lord Jesus. His perceptions were all 
clear, his emotions warm ; he realised, with vivid distinctness, 
the living manhood of Jesus, and all that warm affection which 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 383 

found such dear employment in embracing his earthly friends, 
clung with exhaustless enjoyment and perpetual freshness to 
the Divine Man, whom as a friend he had in heaven. Of 
Jesus he eyer thought ; the outwelling of tender love toward 
Him shed oyer the strong framework of his character that 
beautiful and gentle light which rests on the soul of him who 
has even one bosom friend ; for, in the throwing wide open of 
the breast to the eves of another, in reposing perfectly in his 
honor, wisdom, and love, in humbly, yet joyously knowing 
that he is every way worthy of your total affection, there is 
implied such a power of breaking the chords that bind yon to 
self, such a power to identify yourself with another, to look 
upon your whole character through his eyes, and estimate 
yourself by his fully appreciated and dearly prized excellence, 
that a noble modesty, and mildness, and manly tenderness, 
must more and more speak its influence, in voice, mien, and 
action. This, we say, is the natural influence of pure human 
friendship. And in Jesus, Arnold found, in faultless perfec- 
tion, all he sought in an earthly friend. His eye went right 
across the intervening ages to look into the eyes of the 
Saviour ; he saw there that wisdom which silenced the gain- 
sayer, that calm before which the tempest became still, that 
love which beamed through tears upon the weeping sisters by 
the grave of Lazarus ; he seemed to grasp that hand which 
supported Peter among the waves, and whose touch lit the 
seared eyeball. Or his eye pierced beyond the atmosphere 
of earth altogether : he felt himself walking by the river of life, 
in the midst of the Paradise of God; and here, too, he saw 
that same Jesus, with those same human features and that 
same human smile ; and when, in the overflowing fullness of 
his heart, every expression of affection that might pass be- 
tween earthly friends failed to express his emotion, he could, 



384- THOMAS ARNOLD. 

without scruple and with speechless joyfulness, bow down and 
worship Him. We noted that his heart had yearned after one 
in the image of God, and yet in the image of man, whom he 
could worship ; we found in that yearning the expression of a 
want common to humanit}", and an argument against Unita- 
rianism ; and now, when we find the j^earning satisfied, we 
bid every Unitarian say, whether this blessed influence that 
hallows his whole life is a delusion, and whether such warm 
and living emotions could flow from the sole and irrealizable 
conception of the infinite, the absolute, the one. 

But we must look at Arnold in one other and final aspect ; 
or rather we must look at him where every other aspect is 
seen under a rcellowing light, and all his joys blend in one 
perfect harmony. We have not yet looked into his home ; 
and, without any exaggeration, we may say, it was a sight for 
an angel's eye. It warm.s one's heart to think of his marriage 
and his domestic circle ; he was so precisely fitted for house- 
hold joys. There is something comforting in the absolute de- 
monstration, which his intense relish of life aflfords, that, bad 

• 
as the world may be, and dismal as are the aspects of human 

society, there is yet a distinct possibility, beneath the stars, of 
enjoyment, serene from its very mtensity, perfectly apart 
from the restless excitement of worldliness, or the melancholy 
delirium of passion. His home was a scene of unbroken, of 
almost ecstatic joy ; we are continually reminded of its vicini- 
ty in perusing his biography ; stray gleams from its ever-burn- 
ing hearth are perpetually wandering over his correspondence. 
With an earnestness that is the veiy voice of the heart, he ex- 
claims, " My wife is well, thank God," and we are strangely 
impressed with the unconscious but true sublimity of his 
words, when he speaks of the " almost awful happiness of his 
domestic life." 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 38c5 

It has, in all ages, been a prerogative of Christianity to plant 
and foster domestic feeling and felicities. We would figure 
the religion of Jesus, as walking among men and offering them 
two great boons ; in one hand she holds the treasures of im- 
mortality, in the other are the mild blessings of home. Phi- 
losophy has ever been high, remote, and unparticipating ; in 
her glittering robes, she treads in mnjesty along the high 
places of the world, amid a light that scarce mingles with 
earth's atmosphere, but falls on the eternal snow, a cold, intel- 
lectual light, which has never yet brightened the cloud of un- 
speakable sadness resting on her brow. A high task is hers, 
and we shall pay her all honor, but let us dwell rather with 
Christianity in the valleys and in the clefts of the rock, where 
she spreads the nuptial couch, and lights the household fire. 
We come now briefly to notice -one or two of Arnold's princi- 
pal opinions. 

Arnold of Rugby will ever be known as a foremost cham- 
pion of the belief that church and state are identical. He re- 
garded Christianity as the true test of citizenship, and at once 
withdrew from the London University, when he found that his 
proposal for including Scripture in the entrance examination 
was not to be acceded to. He earnestly opposed the very 
idea of a Christian priesthood, as distinguished from a Chris- 
tian laity ; he considered discipline strictly and appropriately a 
civil penalty ; the idea of government propounded by War- 
burton, that it is a mere protective and legislative force, he 
deemed utterly erroneous. Arguing that the end of a nation, 
as of an individual, must be the glory of God in its own 
greatest happiness, he asserted that the sovereign power, that 
from which there was no appeal, must without a solecism and 
almost a contradiction, be a religious power, in a Christian 
country, of course a Christian power. Let there, he proposed, 

17 



386 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

be framed some general declaration of belief in Christianity, 
embracing the recognition of the Trinity, the inspiration of 
Scripture, and certain other grand leading doctrines; let a cer- 
tain diversity be permitted in the forms of worship ; let the 
churches be occupied by ministers of various shades of belief 
and various preference of form, in the several parts of the 
Lord's day ; let the king be recognized as the head of the 
church on earth ; and let all members of the government, 
from premier to constable, be ministers of the church-state. 

Such was his scheme : it may well, we think, be regarded 
with wonder. It is true that he did not look upon it as at 
once realizable ; it is a fact that he cared little for any impos- 
ing aspect which might result from uniformity, if reality were 
sacrificed to attain it ; yet it is also unquestionable that no idea 
lay nearer his heart than the identity of church and state, and 
the importance of comprehensiveness in standards of belief; 
while no desire moved him more strongly than the instant and 
earnest promulgation of his views on these subjects. Now wo 
deem it unnecessary to enter at length into the examination 
of the scheme, it is so absolutely certain that it will not have 
soon to be opposed in practice. We shall not test it scriptur- 
ally. That we deem unnecessary, since the firm grasp of com- 
mon sense pulls it to pieces. 

It were improper, however, to pass it by altogether without 
remark : it contains too much truth to render it a useless or 
supei-fluous task to combat its error. Several of its minor 
propositions, too, are extremely popular in our day. Particu- 
larly is this true of the proposal it embraces, to introduce the 
external morality of a respectable life in place of any allusion, 
tacit or express, to particular points of intellectual belief, as a 
test of church membership. Few general declarations are 
hailed v\'ith warmer enthusiasm than that which affirms it to 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 38Y 

be the panacea for our ecclesiastical ills, to remove entirely, or 
to attenuate until all obstructing definiteness is removed, the 
dogmatic creeds of our churches ; substituting some easy ac- 
knowledgment of the truth of Christianity, and a consideration 
of individual character. Not doctrine, but life ; such is the cry 
of thousands. Combined with an earnest desire, and we deeply 
honor and defer to such desire, for unity and uniformity among 
the churches, this idea leads men of deep piety, and accustomed 
to reflect on the present aspect of things, to propose such modi- 
fication of our creeds as would make Presbyterians and Epis- 
copalians one, and it might even be, draw an immense contri- 
bution from Rome ; combined with a desire to share the ease 
and respectability of national establishment, and a distaste for 
all religious controversy, it leads men of unsettled or lati- 
tudinarian opinions to hope that their general, and, as it were, 
complimentary recognition of Christianity will procure them 
the name and honor of Christians. We think the idea is 
erroneous, and would offer a few remarks on the subject. 

First, then, we call attention to that principle, clearly dis- 
cernible, and of unbounded range in our present economy, 
which may be generally designated. Division of labor : that 
principle which seeks the attainment of results by the balanc- 
ing of forces, the harmony of antagonisms. The preference 
and pre-eminence which each individual accords to his own 
profession are certainly delusions ; yet is it manifest that these 
and similar delusions produce expedition and heartiness in the 
several departments of human work. Boldly extend the ap- 
plication of our principle : it is scarce possible to extend it too 
far. It will show the Almighty Governor of the world, in the 
inscrutable wisdom of His providence, educing in man's history 
the greatest good possible to a free but fallen will ; it will lead 
us to discern that many ideas of vital moment are kept alive 



388 THOMAS ARXOLD. 

by the jealous circumscriptive zeal of sects, and that a general 
ardor and activity are maintained by the really noble emula- 
tion of bodies making, though by difterent paths, for one goal ; 
whereas, otherwise, both might be covered up in the whited 
sepulcher of a vast and lifeless uniformity. We are fallen : 
we can not, in speaking of man, take a step without acknowl- 
edging that. Truth does not here embrace the world like the 
gi'eat tidal wave, sweeping along in majestic calmness of power, 
and filling every little creek and estuary ; truth rather descends 
fertilizing in many rills, from the mountain side ; and it is bet- 
ter that it descends for the present even so, than that it should 
flow in one broad river, leaving an arid desert over all the 
land, save on its immediate banks. Were Christian zeal in- 
creased in each of the Christian sects, the earth would revive 
and bring forth fair flowers and fruits ; but, by the draining of 
them all into one huge reservoir, no good would for the present 
be done. 

But, next, we beg those we oppose to consider earnestly the 
intense individuality of Christianity ; its habit of starting, in 
all its reforms, from the unit and not from the mass. Arnold 
knew the importance of that word — "The kingdom of God is 
within you ;" but we can not think that he kept it in view 
with sufficient constancy and earnestness. By the conversion 
of individuals the world will be regenerated, and not other- 
wise. This does not make the church, in its visible form and 
appointments, of slight importance, but it points out its grand 
duty, that of converting men, and shows the vanity of looking 
for a substitute for personal godliness in any mechanism or ap- 
paratus. The diihculty here presented is stupendous ; but it 
is precisely the one which must be met. Easy were it to re 
new mankind, and change the face of the world, if it could be 
ione in a public way, by the devising of some magnificent and 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 389 

politic scheme of government ; then might the corner-stone of 
the new world be brought out in haste, and, indeed, with shout- 
ing (for should not we have found it ?) ; but the kingdom of 
God cometh not with observation : it is the silent unseen work, 
in the quiet parish, in the quieter heart, that advances it ; there 
is no waving of banners, no triumph of human wisdom. And 
its final glories will come Avhen the Sun of the latter morn is 
rising : the golden walls of the New Jerusalem will be cast in 
heaven. 

And we must urgently press the question. What sort of uni- 
ty or uniformity is desired 1 A reality or a sham ? A unity 
which will give clearness and wisdom in counsel, and prompt 
decision in action, which will fan gently the ranks of a sympa- 
thizing, consciously agreeing people, each individual strength- 
ening his neighbor's hand, or a flaring, meaningless banner, 
toward which every man looks with anxious suspicion, not 
knowing whither it leads — a blazoned pretense, which makes 
each man unaware with whom he acts, and leaves him in the 
torment of loneliness, rendered threefold more intolerable by 
the absence of that clearness of vision, and distinctness of aim, 
which redeem the evils- of positive singularity of belief — a per- 
plexing and indefinable Delphic enigma, whose highest end is 
that ever contemptible one, to save appearances 1 

Supposing any such scheme as Arnold's were carried into 
effect to-morrow, what were gained 1 Surely it were no addi- 
tional union, that ministers who were wont to preach in differ- 
ent places of worship, officiated at different times, and to dif- 
ferent congregations, in the same edifice ; surely it could not 
be expected that a month would pass over without discomfort 
and disruption ; surely no additional force would be conferred 
upon individual effort by its being all ranged under this totter- 
ing standard of patchwork unity. What advantage would re- 



390 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

suit in the assailing of adversaries is so slight as to be almost 
impalpable even to imagination ; while vast additional contempt 
would be hurled against any such church, by a body of assail- 
ants more closely united than ever. A church acts through 
her members ; Christianize your members and you invigorate 
your church ; but that some unaccountable power would arise 
from furnishing members with a huge vapor-built abstraction, 
called a church, is surely incredible. 

This whole idea, we suspect, contradicts and outrages cer- 
tain of the deepest, noblest, and most ancient instincts of man. 
To purify the banner of truth, to leave no stain on the 
stars beaming there, and then to strive, in the face of scorn 
ind hatred, to draw men around it and to carry it over the 
world ; — these are the perpetually noble aims of men. To 
inscribe it with an ambiguous legend, to blot and stain its 
stars, to exclaim that it is of slight consequence that men 
disbelieve in it, if they only follow it ; — these are no sublime 
objects at all. 

It is proper next to obviate difficulty, by observing that all 
Arnold's reasoning from the Epistles of St. Paul, and that of 
similar arguers, even if we granted it to be unassailable on its 
own ground, which we by no means do, can be met by this 
altogether preliminary consideration; That the Epistles of 
Paul, and all the Epistles of the New Testament, are addressed 
to those already in the Christian Church, and supposed, ijiso 
facto, to have acceded to the scheme of Christian doctrine pro- 
pounded by the Apostles. In the Church, assuredly, attention 
was directed to the conduct ; although it is almost impossible 
to believe that, since the enforcement of doctrinal points is so 
emphatic and so habitually take the lead in Paul's Epistles, 
he would not have regarded the rejection of any material por- 
tion of Christian doctrine an adequate reason for refusal of the 



THOMAS AKN OLD. 391 

benefits of Christian communion ; but, even overlooking this 
and his express pronunciation of a curse upon him who preach- 
ed any other doctrine than he had delivered, we say that it is 
not to the internal exercise of church discipline, but to the 
original admission into the church, that appeal must, be made. 
And in this case, how brief soever the formula might be, it 
had no reference to the life, but to the faith. It was the be- 
lieving acceptance of Christ which entitled any one to baptism. 
And if the simple declaration of belief in Christ were now as 
little ambiguous as it was then, the briefness of the formula, 
as well as its essential characteristic, might be retained ; but 
when a general declaration comes simply to nothing, when it 
would admit all men, from Unitarians to Methodists, who 
chose to name the name of Christ, your only choice, if you 
retain the essential nature of the early declaration by which a 
man was admitted to the Church of Christ, is, to make it more 
explicit. 

We next demand, on the part of all those whose perpetual 
cry is against creeds, to weigh well the question, whether it is 
not really more in consistence with the general constitution of 
human affairs, that a body of men should unite themselves 
under a test of doctrine, than a test of conduct. There is no 
fact more certain, or more generally recognized, than this. 
That the spiritual life of a man, his internal world of belief, 
opinion, feeling, is behind and determinative of his spoken or 
acted life. " False action," remarks Mr. Carlyle, " is the fruit 
of false speculation ; let the spirit of society be free and strong, 
that is to say, let true principles inspire the members of society, 
then neither can disorders accumulate in its practice ;" etc. 
If you wish to know a man thoroughly, you must know his 
belief: as he thinks in his heart so is he. No great revolution 
in man's external life ever took place without originating in 



392 T H O M A S A R X O L D . 

this iDternal religion ; all religions and philosophies address 
man as a reasoning, believing, not alone as an acting creature; 
and the fact holds eminently good in the case of Christianity, 
which came to the world with salvation by faith in Christ, 
wrought by the Spirit of God in the inner man. It may be 
known, indeed, from life, whether profession is faithful ; if 
one comes with " Lord, Lord," on his lips, you may know 
by hi fruits, you have no other means of knowing than 
by his fruits, whether he really believes in the Lord or no. 
But if he declines even this preliminary confession, if he can 
not say, in terms admitting of no ambiguity, that his faith is 
the Christian, he must remain without the pale of your church, 
and you have no power or right to control either his beliefs 
or actions. 

Last of all, we would remind those who believe that instant 
and universal harmony would arise from an appeal to a stand- 
ard of life in our determination of the question of church mem- 
bership, that there are facts in ecclesiastical history to render 
their position more than doubtful. We would commend to 
them the study of the history of Menno Simonis and his fol- 
lowers, in the period following the Reformation. Whatever 
lessons we may or may not draw from that history, we can 
not fail to draw this : That to settle the standard of conduct will 
be as fruitful a source of disagreement, as it has been to uphold 
that of belief. You will again have your lax and more lax, 
your old and new, your hot and cold, your good, bad, and in- 
different (the latter tending to multiply) ; in one word, you 
will find that the formula for absolute concord in any great 
body of men is still in that undiscovered region where lie the 
philosopher's stone and the elixir vitce. Unless, indeed, you 
are willing, for uniformity, to sacrifice every thing else ; there 
is one magician whose wand will give you uniformity enough, 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 393 

on his owii conditions ; will you consent that your church be 
touched by the mace of Death 1 The fact is, that we must 
bear in mind what we may call the melancholy immortality, 
the resurgent Phoenix nature of error. Looking on former 
ages, we can discern, perhaps, an excessive tendency to rely 
upon creeds ; this perished, but, in dying, gave birth to what 
is equally an error, the disposition altogether to underrate 
them. Surely it is unwise to cast from us the fruit of 
the intellectual toil of centuries ; if it is true that creeds 
can not save us, is it not a still more absurd mistake to 
conceive that theological indefiniteness will prove a salve for 
all our ills '? 

We think we reach the source at once of Arnold's general 
misconception on these subjects, and of much of the prevalent 
error regarding them, by considering the slight hint given 
when he happens to speak of " Sectarianism, that worst and 
most mischievous idol by which Christ's Church has ever been 
plagued." This is at the very root of the matter, and deserves 
especial consideration. For it is absolutely certain that there 
is a deeper evil than Sectarianism in the Church of Christ ; 
there is, in all ages, that tendency of poor drowsy humanity 
to fall asleep and hide its eyes from the celestial radiance ; 
there is that stagnation, that indifference, that death, wrapping 
itself in various coverings — of loyalty to man, of custom, of 
respectability — against wliich all that is good in Sectarianism 
has been the rebellion and resistance. Who, with the Bible 
in his hand, and the history of the Church to read by its light, 
can fail to discern, what, indeed, has been seen by a searching 
eye which has yet, alas ! looked away from the Cross to some 
other hope, that it is precisely the heavenly nature of Chris- 
tianity as an individual work, its perennial and essential supe- 
riority to any form of belief or mode of practice, to any stand- 
17* 



B94- T II M A S A n N O L D . 

ard in morals or attairiment in life, which can be asserted of a 
class, or transmitted by descent, which has n=»cessitated the 
phenomenon, startling at first, but, when well examined, highly 
encouraging, that its every great revival has occasioned di- 
vision and debate. Christianity has been a struggling light, a 
fermenting leaven, a purging flame ; at its every revival, men 
have striven, as it were, to cr^'-stallize it and still keep it hot, 
whereas it has indeed crystallized, but instantly began to cool. 
Were it not for Sectarianism, would not certain churches have 
become absolutely dead — decayed willow-trunks, hollow, dry 
as tinder, hoary yet not venerable 1 That divisiveness is in 
its nature bad, we were certainly the last to deny ; that the 
strength of union is so great, that the Christian ought to look vrell 
ere he foregoes it, is also true ; yet we must believe that, when 
our Lord Jesus spoke of his bringing division into the world, 
his eye glanced over the whole interval between that hour and 
the millennium, and that, though the unspeakable peace which 
He breathed over his disciples ere departing from them is 
ever to be sought after by the Church, and may at times bliss- 
fully envelop it as it wraps in its ethereal atmosphere the in- 
dividual soul, yet it can not hope for unbroken repose until 
it is touched by the rays of the latter morning. And this fact 
is of extreme importance, for instruction, for warning, for 
consolation. It is well that men be constantly reminded 
that Christianity is, once for all, essentially and eternally dif- 
ferent from a power of respectability ; that it has a peren- 
nial tendency to turn this world upside down, that it raises 
the soul into a region of other and loftier feelings and habi- 
tudes than can be attained by the embracing of any system 
or the following of any rules, that it is a walk of tribulation 
gloomy with the frowns of kinsman and fellow-citizen. Chris- 
tianity is a personal, real, and even awful agency, and no 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 395 

yearning for peace must be permitted to neutralize the effect 
of this consideration. 

Though there is thus much to be questioned in Dr. Arnold's 
views on churches and creeds, we must again affirm, and with 
emphasis, that there was embodied in these views a great 
amount of invaluable truth. The prominence he gave to the 
great fact that priesthood, in all relating to meditation, inter- 
cession, or peculiar hereditary privilege, found its completion 
and conclusion in Christ, is sufficient of itself to impart value 
to his system. There is, perhaps, no idea in the circle of 
theologic truth more glorious or pregnant than this. That 
every member of Christ's mystical body, His Church, is a 
king and priest to God ; that converted men are now God's 
Levitical tribe on earth, witnessing for Him before the w/rld, 
and bearing censers filled with fire from off the heavenly altar ; 
that no Christian, whatever his sphere, can absolve himself 
from the responsibility and duty of preaching Christ in his life 
and conversation ; that the clergy have no power as distinguished 
from the Church, and are simply that part of it set aside, 
as fitted in a more marked degree than the others, to preach 
and to rule ; — these and kindred ideas would, if they pervaded 
the minds of Christian nations, so completely dissipate at once 
all superstitious reverence toward the pastorate, and all class 
opposition to it — would shed such a spirit of true internal 
unity, and harmonious, intelligent content through our churches 
— would animate to such fresh and flir extended zeal in the 
efforts of all to spread the Gospel of our Lord, that no earnest- 
ness, no iteration, can be excessive, in their advocacy and de- 
monstration. All the writings, too, of this truly Christian 
man, whether on this or on other subjects, proclaim to the 
world the sad fact that Christianity has yet but slightly leav- 



396 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

ened its affairs, and call for a thorough penetration by its 
spirit of every province of things. 

Contemplating the whole phenomenon of Arnold's belief in 
this church-state, we can not but conclude that he fell into that 
mistake of noble minds, to represent the world as by no 
means in so ruined a condition as has been deemed, and hope 
for speedy amendment, by simple declaration of error, and 
proclamation of truth. Nature seems, as it were, to kindle 
this hope, that the young and ardent may go in full heart to 
the work, and not leave the world to absolute stagnation and 
death. Had Luther, when he felt the giant stirrings of the 
young life in his bosom, been permitted to catch a glimpse of 
those griefs and forebodings, with which, in his latter days, he 
wasVipt to regard the state of the world, his hand had scarce 
been steady enough to hold that pen whose end shook the 
miter in the Palace of the Seven Hills. The glory of exultant 
hope gleams over Milton's earlier page, yet he lived to mourn 
the evil days on which he had fallen, and to shadow forth his 
own stern sorrows in Samson Agonistes. All great and noble 
souls seemed to have begun their work in hope, and ended it 
in sorrow ! Arnold could not even have given utterance to 
his scheme as a present measure, without conceiving more 
favorably of men than their state warranted. 

When death overtook him he was, of course, as far from the 
attainment as ever. Toward the end he said : — " When I 
think of the Church, I could sit down and pine and die." He 
retained the idea to the last, but was beginning to have mis- 
givings. "I am myself so much inclined to the idea of a 
strong social bond, that I ought not to be suspected of any 
tendency to anarchy ; yet I am beginning to think that the 
idea may be overstrained, and that this attempt to merge the 
soul and will of the individual man in the general body is, 



IHOLIAS ARNOLD. 397 

when fully developed, contrary to the very essence of Chris- 
tianity. After all, it is the individual soul that must be saved, 
and it is that which is addressed in the Gospel." And again, 
shortly before his death : '-I feel so deeply the danger and 
evil of the false system, that despairing of seeing the true 
Church restored, I am disposed to cling, not from choice, but 
necessity, to the Protestant tendency of laying the whole 
stress on Christian religion, and adjourning the notion of 
Church sine die.'''' This certainly is in the right direction ; in 
conformity with the spirit not only of the Reformation, but of 
the New Testament. Consider, once more, the close personal 
dealing of our Sa^-iour's discourses, and the burning earnest- 
ness of Paul's discussion and enforcement of the points per- 
taining to individual salvation in his several epistles, and^this 
must become evident. The Old Testament dealt with systems 
and nationalities ; the New Testament deals with individual 
conversion, with individual life : the old dispensation had its 
kingdom of Israel, seen among the nations as a cluster of 
beams falling from heaven on one spot, in a dark weltering 
sea ; the new dispensation has its kingdom of God, all noise- 
less and unobserved, in the individual heart : the old dispensdL- 
tion had its temple on Moriah, crowning the mountain with 
gold, and adorned with the richest and rarest workmanship of 
the ancient world ; the new dispensation has the soul of man 
for its temple, viewless, and, to the unpurified, unennobled 
thought, unimposlng, yet all-containing and everlasting. It is 
an unseen, a spiritual sublimity that Christianity aims at ; its 
ineffable holiness is discerned in the fact that it enrobes the 
soul in an immortality which can even now be recognized to 
hold more of heaven than of earth, and to have no element 
which will not flourish best in the serene air of eternity ; con- 
found it with systems and hierarchies, with the pomp and 



398 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

show of visible ceremonious uniformity, and you overlook its 
essence ; there will be no end of your wandering. Let Chris- 
tians awaken to convert the world ; that done, all is done ; 
that missed, though the world tottered under the weight of 
cathedrals, and the pile of ghastl}^ uniformity had a base as 
broad as Sahara, all were lost. 

Arnold's view of the office and education of the theologian 
in our day deserves a passing glance. It recognized the value 
of the human element, as distinguished from the barely the- 
ological, the fatal danger, that students of theology become 
mere discriminators of doctrinal correctness, mere defenders 
of creed and system, mere catechetic expounders of the truth, 
mere denizens of the school or library, failing to unfold within 
them that expansion of human sympathy which is the means 
in God's hand of the action of man on man. Soundness in 
doctrine is of vital importance ; yet theological education must 
wander from the spirit of Christianity, if it becomes a mere 
instruction and practice in systematic or exegetic theology ; it 
is well that a fisherman can keep his net in order, perceiving 
and rectifying the slightest rent or weakness ; yet the manner 
of casting the net is also of great moment, and we appeal to 
those informed in the matter, whether it is not common to find 
young men armed at all points in exegetic and controversial 
theology, who yet fail utterly when they come to cast the Gos- 
pel net out into the world. Christ called his disciples to be 
fishers of men, to the grand practical task of world-conversion ; 
when He sent out the seventy. His summary of doctrine was 
very short, while His detail of the method of their preaching 
was much more extended. 

Arnold's political views need not long detain us. He loved 
politics extremely ; he considered it a noble ambition which 
prompted the desire of ruling. The leading features of his 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 399 

system atn be easily defined ; they reflect well the main fea- 
tures of his mind, fiery realism, and statesmanlike constructive- 
ness. He was one of the most determined opponents that con- 
servatism, in the various forms in which it has stereotyped 
itself, ever met. He deemed it always, in its essence erro- 
neous ; to halt was of necessity wrong ; it was only by progress, 
he would have said, that what is good could be preserved : pro 
ceed as slowly as is necessary for sureness, but pause in the 
ocean, and that moment your ship begins to rot, or the revolu- 
tionary tempest awakens behind, and then the acceleration is 
fatal. His words on the subject are deliberate and bold : — " As 
I feel that, of the two besetting sins of human nature, selfish 
neglect and selfish agitation, the former is the more common, 
and has, in the long run, done far more harm than the latter, 
although the outbreaks of the latter, while they last, are of a 
far more atrocious character ; so I have in a manner vowed to 
myself, and prayed that, with God's blessing, no excesses of 
popular wickedness, though I should be myself, as I expect, the 
victim of them, no temporary evils produced by revolution, 
shall ever make me forget the wickedness of Toryism — of that 
spirit which crucified Christ himself, which has, throughout the 
long experience of all history, continually thwarted the cause 
of God and goodness, and has gone on abusing its opportuni- 
ties, and heaping up wrath, by a long series of selfish neglect, 
against the day of wrath and judgment." Again : — " There is 
nothing so revolutionary, because there is nothing so unnatural 
and so convulsive to society, as the strain to keep things 
fixed, when all the world is by the very law of its creation in 
eternal progress ; and the cause of all the evils of the world 
may be traced to that natural but most deadly error of human 
indolence and corruption, that our business is to preserve, and 
not to improve." He challenges a wide induction : — " Search 



400 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

and look whether you can find that any constitution was de- 
stroyed from within, by faction or discontent, without its de- 
struction having been, either just penally, or necessary, because 
it could not any longer answer its proper purposes." At 
times he breaks forth in a fine strong figure : — '' ' Flectere si 
nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo,' is the cry of Reform, when, 
long repulsed and scorned, she is on the point of changing her 
visage to that of Revolution." From these characteristic sen- 
tences, compared with other parts of his works, we learn ac- 
curately his position as a political thinker. Selfishness in its 
two forms he shunned on either hand : the selfishness that will 
sit in icy and relentless indifference on its throne, though that 
throne be placed on a pyramid of skulls ; this is the selfishness 
of those for whom it has, in all ages, been hard to enter into the 
kingdom of heaven : and the selfishness which cries simply, 
Give, give ; let religion, honor, valor, all be flang aside, let 
Throne, Church, Aristocracy be cast into the fire, that we may 
be warmed at the blaze ; this is the selfishness of anarchy and 
atheism ; between the two he trimmed, in the golden mean of 
a manly patriotism, a reasonable, unresting, unhasting progress, 
and a stooping to the majesty of law. The Warburton theory 
of government, as we have seen, he rejected ; he recognized 
the duties and responsibilities of nations ; and thus we trace 
his political system to its union with his Christianity in the re- 
sponsible civil-religious church-state. The laissez-faire school 
he opposed absolutely, looking with feelings of profound and 
melancholy interest upon tlie eighteenth century in its first half, 
as a time of rest, which might have been improved, but was 
lost forever. 

In 1842, we find Arnold writing thus in his diary : — " The 
day after to-morrow is my birth-day, if I am permitted to live 
to see it — my forty-seventh birth-day since my birth. How 



THOMAS ARNOLD. 401 

large a portion of my life on earth is already passed. And 
then — what is to follow this life ? How visibly my outward 
work seems contracting and softening away into the gentler 
emotions of old age. In one sense, how nearly can I now say, 
' Vixi.^ And I thank God that, as far as ambition is concerned, 
it is, I trust, fully mortified ; I have no desire other than to 
step back from my present place in the world, and not to rise 
to a higher. Still, there are works which, with God's per- 
mission, I wonld do before the night cometh; especially that 
great work, if I might be permitted to take part in it. But, 
above all, let me mind my own personal work — to keep my- 
self pure, and zealous, and believing — ^laboring to do God's 
will; yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than 
by others, if God disapproves of my doing it." 

Christianity has wrought its work ; the armor is girded on, 
yet there is the willingness to unbrace it, the noble warrior 
valor yearns to share the combat, but yet is embraced and 
transfigured in the nobler, that hides self altogether in desire 
for the glory of God. Next morning he hears the voice of 
death ; the sun of that birth-day looked upon his corpse. 

There is something to us martially stirring, and even beau- 
tiful, in the death of Arnold. It is like that of a warrior on 
the stricken field ; so suddenly does it come, and with such a 
calm pride does he meet it. That brief, decisive inquiry as to 
the nature of his ailment is strangely interesting ; he is racked 
with pain, and yet he is as pointed, cool, and explicit, as if he 
were examining a pupil. And the last look seen in his filming 
eye was that of unutterable kindness ! 

At the time when x\rnold died, he could be ill spared to 
England. In the peaceful retirement toward which he had 
for some time looked, his eye might have taken a calmer, a 
wider, a more searching look, at those great questions with 



402 THOMAS ARNOLD. 

which his life had made him so thoroughly conversant, and on 
which the thought of a lifetime was well spent ; in the still and 
rich light of a restful evening, he might have seen what escaped 
his somewhat agitated gaze in the glare and bustle of day. 
Indications there were, as we have seen, of a change. It is not 
our part, however, to complain ; rather let us join in that noble 
expression of satisfied acquiescence in the plans of God, which 
so appropriately and sublimely closed his last writing. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 



Thomas Chalmers was born in one of those homes which have 
been the pride and the blessing of Scotland : to which, rather 
than to aught else, Scotland may point as her achievement 
among the nations, and to whose final uprearing countless influ- 
ences and agencies have co-operated. It is often in the far 
distance that causes work, whose effects are seen in living 
bloom around : the cloud was gathered from the remote Atlan- 
tic, whose drops cause the farmer's little corn-field to spring ; 
the hillock on whose side his cottage turns its bright face 
toward the southern sun was upheaved by the might of central 
fire ere mankind was born. The fierce struggle in the dark 
wood of Falkirk, the victorious charge on the bright plain of 
Bannockburn, the wrestling of Luther with Satan in his silent 
chamber at Erfurt, the far flight and inevitable gaze of the 
intellect of Calvin, the rugged earnestness of Knox, the godly 
valor of Peden and Cameron, all conjoined their agencies to 
build up the quiet homes of Presbyterian Scotland. Nor was 
this an unworthy or insignificant consummation : the almost 
reverential admiration with which all men have looked into 
the circle of " The Cottar's Saturday Night" proclaims it to 
have been noble and sufficient. Of such homes, substantial 
comfort and cheerful piety were the characteristics ; religious 
thoughtfulness and industrious peace dwelt there in kindly 



404 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

union ; the " auld Ha'-Bible" was their corner-stone. Such 
homes write on the face of the world the best evidence of the 
truth of Christianity ! And the father of Thomas Chalmers 
was the worthy head of such a home, a fine example of the 
right-hearted Calvinistic Scotchman. Of deep and tender feel- 
ings, yet ever manly and firm, humble and reverent toward 
God, unobtrusive yet unbending in the presence of men, John 
Chalmers of Anstruther was that style of man which forms 
the life-blood of a nation, and whose presence in a family is 
the satisfactory guarantee of an education ^hich may, without 
hesitation, be pronounced good. Thomas was his sixth child ; 
he was born at Anstruther in Fife, in March, 1780. He showed 
from the first a noble disposition : truthful, joyous, affection- 
ate ; the reader can judge how the influences of such a father 
and such a home would act upon him. 

In his childhood we find little worthy of remark ; little more, 
probably, than is to be told of all healthy and clever children. 
When so much a child as to be grossly ill-treated by his nurse, 
he is yet so much a man as to observe with strict honor a 
promise of secrecy which she easily won from his unsuspecting 
heart ; he soon determines to be a minister, and, not to lose 
time, chooses his first text, " Let brotherly love continue," a 
text, by the way, of which he would have approved as heartily 
at sixty as at six ; one day he is caught pacing his room, and 
repeating, in evident emotion, the words " Oh, Absalom, my 
son, my son." These are pleasing traits, if nowise extraor- 
dinary ; they at least show clearly that he was a noble child. 

At school he was almost precisel;^ what it is best for a boy 
to be ; if he erred at all, it was on the safe side. This portion 
of his training may be characterized fully and fitly by saying, 
that the important education of the class-room was carefully 
prevented from encroaching on the perhaps even more import- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 405 

ant education of the playground. He was distinguished in 
school by no remarkable proficiency, and might be known 
among his class-fellows only by the greater strength and buoy- 
ancy of his young nature. When he chose to learn, he learned 
fast ; this is an undoubted and important fact. But it was in 
the field or the playground, where the free loud laugh of the 
glad young bosom rang cheerily, every faculty awake to watch 
the turns and win the triumphs of the game, every muscle in 
fine healthfiil tension, every drop of blood surging in exultant 
fullness of life, that an observant and penetrating eye might 
have discerned the probability of his trimming skillfully be- 
tween metaphysical dreaminess and mechanic dullness, and 
attaining a healthful, powerful manhood. He was at school 
rather a Clive than a Coleridge. His youthful mind was one 
of marked candor and purity ; at no period of his life was he 
tainted with aught definitely vicious or ignoble. His nature 
was open, generous, affectionate ; his strength, physical and 
intellectual, exuberant; he was social, truthful, and pure- 
minded. 

Ere completing his twelfth year, he entered the University 
of St. Andrews. During the first two sessions, he was still a 
school-boy. " Golf, foot-ball, and particularly hand-ball," with 
similar avocations, occupied his time. Any thing deserving the 
name of classical culture he never received. At the precise 
period when a few additional years at school would probably 
have affected his whole history, he was sent to the university ; 
his sympathies, unawakened to the greatness and the beauty 
of antiquity, were soon arrested by mathematics. 

It was in his fourteenth year that his mind awoke to its full 
intellectual vigor. He then commenced his third session at 
the university, and entered upon the study of mathematics. 
The pursuit was eminently congenial, and he at once became 



406 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

distinguished. The teacher of the mathematical classes in St. 
Andrews at this time was Dr. James Brown, and Chalmers 
was much in his society. It was the period of the French 
Eevolution, and Dr. Brown participated largely in the excite- 
ment of the time. He was of the school of radical reform in 
politics, and no doubt of extremely liberal sentiments on relig- 
ious matters. As was to be expected, Chalmers embraced 
the opinions of his instructor. He read Godwin's Political 
Justice with delight and approval ; he gazed on that vast, elab- 
orate, and surely imposing structure, with its ice-pinnacles, 
clear, sharply defined, glittering in the wintery air, and deemed 
it a palace in whose many chambers the human race might at 
length find rest ; he breathed for a time the thin atmosphere 
of its chill virtue and clockwork justice, and thought it were 
well always to be there. The ideas which he had brought 
from his father's house fell away from him ; for the homespun 
but substantial garb of Scotch Calvinism, he substituted one 
of modern make, jaunty and of bright color, but spun mainly 
of vapor and moonshine. The thorough depravity of man, an 
atonement by the death of Christ, salvation by faith alone, 
were left to the weak and narrow-minded. What seemed a 
wider and more brilliant prospect opened to the eye of the as- 
piring student. Scaling the sunny heights of college promo- 
tion, loving truth and proclaiming virtue, winning the crowns 
of fame, expatiating in the sky-fields of thought and imagina- 
tion, basking in the smile of the Universal Benevolence, he 
would go on in his strength and prosper. This we consider 
the first epoch in the intellectual history of Chalmers. 

In 1795, he entered the Divinity Hall, formally to com- 
mence the study of theology. His mind, however, was yet 
under the spell of geometry. He had forced his way to the 
French mathematical literature, and was diligently occupied 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 407 

in that opulent field. Toward the close, however, of his first 
theological session, a more important intellectual influence 
than that of mathematics was brought to bear upon his mind. 
He became acquainted with the Inquiry of Jonathan Edwards. 
Its study was to him an exercise of rapturous delight ; his 
mind was filled with it till it seemed about to "lose its 
balance." It was the second determining influence in his men- 
tal development ; mathematics and radicalism were the first. 
We must make one or two observations on its nature, and on 
what it reveals. 

The simple fact that, at the age of fifteen, it was to him not 
a task, but a positive and intense pleasure, to follow the dry 
light of the great American metaphysician into those remote 
and difficult regions of thought, is a proof of extraordinary in- 
tellectual endowment. At an age Vt'hen his sympathies might 
have been expected to find comfort and response in the circu- 
lating library, and his intellect a pleasurable occupation in the 
lighter walks of history or science, he found his whole spiritual 
nature freely and delightfully exercised by the treatise on the 
freedom of the will. And the effect it produced on his boyish 
mind is remarkable. With the exception of Swifc's icy mis- 
anthropy, we can remember no phenomenon in literature com- 
parable to the unimpassioned coldness of the mind of Edwards 
in the investigation of those high and awful themes which are 
directly or indirectly the subject of his Inquiry. We conceive 
his argument, when well understood in its limits and condi- 
tions, to be irrefragable ; yet it is more than can be demanded 
of the human mind to disrobe itself so entirely of human sym- 
pathy as the mind of Jonathan Edwards appears to disrobe 
itself as we read that treatise. We assert not that its author 
was a man devoid of kindness of heart, but, in his work on the 
freedom of the will, he seems to us to resolve himself abso- 



408 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

lately into a ttiinkiug apparatus. He deliberately looks into 
hell, and the whole heat of its burnings can not melt into a 
tear the ice in his eye ; he gazes on a great portion of his 
brother men stretched to eternity upon a wheel, and his eyelid 
quivers no more than if he saw a butterfly. 

Now we desire to note, that, despite the tremendous im- 
pression produced on the mind of Chalmers by the Inquiry 
into the freedom of the will, the effect was not to darken but 
to brighten, not to depress but to elevate. It produced "a 
twelvemonth of elysium ;" these are his own words. His in- 
tellect was not beaten hard, and rendered dead to all other im- 
pulses — a common case with young men whom the genius of 
some writer overpowers. He did not, with a trembling, 
gloomy, irresistible curiosity, pry and pry into the world of 
mystery here opened up to him, as young Foster would have 
done. He accepted the truth he found ; he saw the whole 
universe in God. But when he went with Edwards to the 
mouth of hell, he still heard the melodies of heaven. He saw 
that Infinite Power clasped the world, but he could feel that 
Infinite Wisdom guided the infinite might, and be content. 
His mind expanded and brightened. He might have been 
seen at early morn in the dewy fields, whither he went to 
wander alone, and to expatiate in the vast conception ; to feel 
the world but a little station on which to stand and see hiui- 
self overarched by the infinitude of God as by the illimitable 
azure above his head ; to lifl up his eyes and catch a glimpse 
of the golden chains by which the universe hung round the 
throne of God. Looking upon him in those hours, it seems 
scarce possible not to be reminded of that striking passage in 
modern poetry, in which the great poet of nature and medita- 
tion, whose conception of certain great influences which aid in 
molding lofty and thoughtful character was perhaps stronger 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 409 

than that of any other, has pictured the corresponding stage 
of mental history in the case of his own hero. 

"The growing youth, 
What soul was his, ■when, from the naked top 
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun 
Rise up and bathe the world in light ! He look'd — 
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth 
And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay 
Beneath him: — Far and wide the clouds were touch' d. 
And in their silent faces could he read 
Unutterable love, Sound needed none, 
Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
The sj)ectaele ; sensation, soul, and form. 
All melted into him ; they swallow'd up 
His animal being ; in them did he live, 
. And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
In such access of mind^ in such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God, 
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. 
N'o thanks he breathed, he proffer'd no request ; 
Rapt into still communion that transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power 
That made him ; it was blessedness and love." 

We do not iind that Chalmers was at all smitten by fear ; 
the passionless demonstration of Edwards, of all modes of rep- 
resentation perhaps the best calculated to impress his mind 
with terror, cast over it no thick abiding gloom ; he expe- 
rienced the sublime emotion of reverential awe, but he knew 
nothing of slavish fear. His mind was of that radically sound 
and noble order which responds to influences of hope and love 
rather than of fear and constraint ; he had an affinity with 
light. 

18 



410 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

He had not yet, however, completed the stages of what was 
strictly his education. He had o pass through a more painful 
ordeal than he had hitherto known. In 1798, he entered the 
family of a gentleman as private tutor. Nothing of moment 
occurred during his residence there. It was, indeed, a fine re- 
ply which he gave when taunted by his employer with pride, 
one worthy of a self-respecting and high-minded youth : " There 
are," he said, " two kinds of pride, sir : there is that pride 
which lords it over inferiors, and there is that pride which re- 
joices in repressing the insolence of superiors. The first I 
have none of; the second I glory in ;" yet we attach little im- 
portance to the probably accidental squabbles in which he be- 
came involved. But about the period of his quitting this resi- 
dence and returning to St. Andrews to complete his theological 
studies, when he was just entering on his twentieth year, he fell 
in with D'Holbach's once celebrated Systeme de la Nature. 
The agitations of his tutorship had, it may be, somewhat un- 
settled and fevered his mind, rendering it more open to assault, 
disturbing that calm concentration of power by which error is 
best met and repelled. The pompous, far-sounding rhetoric 
of the book charmed his ear; the magnitude and apparent 
stability of its scientific scaffolding caught his eye ; its tone of 
calm assumption, as if it were the conclusive utterance of ulti- 
mate truth, perplexed and confounded him. It was not the 
flippant audacity of youth ; it preached virtue of the most 
high-flown order ; it could not be the birth of ignorance, for it 
was reared upon the foundation of modern science. It planted 
its scientific engines on the earth, and with an air of perfect 
strength and philosophic deliberation turned them against prin- 
cipalities and powers. First, it swept from earth's horizon all 
religions, the Christian among the rest ; these it flung into one 
grave, and wrote over it — Superstition ; then it cast a thick 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 411 

impenetrable smoke, as from the depths of hell, over all the 
heaven, blottmg out those fields of immortality, toward which 
the eye of humanity, through its weary pilgrimage, has ever 
gazed with wistfal hope ; these it called the phantom pictures 
of enthusiasm and imagination ; last of all, it aimed its bolts 
at the throne of the universe, to dethrone Him that sat there. 
The ultimate achievement of science was to seat itself in the 
throne of God. And how beneficent was its reign to be ! The 
green earth was to bask in the universal sunshine, impeded by 
no darkening cloud ; the fair field was no longer to be trodden 
by the hoof of the war-steed, the harvests of earth were no 
longer to be fatted with human gore ; the world was to become 
one vast dancing saloon, where men abode for a time, and 
from which, on any occasion of inconvenience, suicide, the no- 
ble right and privilege of the free, was ready to dismiss them ; 
all Ethiopians were to be washed white, or, at least, white- 
washed ; the infancy and boyhood of humanity had passed, and 
now the noonday of its youth had come. These things were 
to be done by the knowledge of the laws of the world ; such 
laws were all physical ; ideas could be mechanically accounted 
for ; " our soul has occasion for ideas the same as our stomach 
has occasion for aliments." The proud philosopher required 
but one word to account for the universe — ^physical law. Such 
was the teaching of the System of Nature. 

The mind of Chalmers was of a decidedly scientific cast ; he 
had been long accustomed to the bare and precise reasoning of 
mathematics ; he delighted in a definite, comprehensible, tangi- 
ble proof. Here, then, was D'Holbach, pointing out his laws, 
measuring, with consummate assurance, heaven and earth, 
plausibly, nay, powerfully, exhibiting the evils of superstition, 
and making them synonymous with the evils of religion, talk- 
ing in the loftiest strain of universal benevolence and felicity, 



412 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and concluding with a fine rhetorical panegyric on virtue. To 
the baron it was sun-clear that a divine power in the universe 
was superfluous ; these were the laws, why go beyond them ? 
And if such was superfluous, it was but the next step to pro- 
nounce its belief noxious. Chalmers was staggered. It seemed, 
for a time, as if that Eye which Edwards had shown him light- 
ing the universe was to go out. He was in deep anguish and 
perplexity ; his friends feared for his reason. But his mind 
was too fair, too noble, and too substantially grounded, to 
^ apse into skepticism. He had heard one side of the question ; 
.le honestly turned to hear the other. The result was, that 
he was firmly and forever established in the belief of Chris- 
tianity. 

The various steps in this gradual consummation we are un- 
able to trace : but we know the general means by which he at- 
tained it. It was by a fair study of the great apologists of the 
last century — Beattie, Paley, and Butler. The first of these it 
was who steadied him after the maddening draught of material- 
ism : the precise date of his perusal of Paley we can not fix ; 
his final declaration, uttered long afterward, was, " Butler made 
me a Christian." The outline of his progress may, we tliink, 
be traced. He soon saw that, with all its pretense, and para- 
phernalia, the system of D'Holbach was a mere film on the 
surface of things ; the arguments of Beattie certified him of 
the reliability of man's inner beliefs ; and Butler's giant intel 
lect gave him a glance into the real structure of the universe. 
He came to the unalterable conviction that there was a God. 
This we take to have been his first stage. He then looked 
calmly at the historical evidence of the fact, that Jesus of Naz- 
areth did perform works competent only to almighty power 
on the plains of Judea ; the clear and masterly logic of Paley 
satisfied him of this. The other steps naturally followed. The 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 413 

result was a deliberate conviction that it was a fact dubitable 
by no fair and capable intellect, that the Christian religion was 
positively revealed to man by the living God. 

We have two remarks to make here. 

The first is, That this method of proof embraces substantial 
evidence for the truth of Christianity. There are minds which 
are incapable of doubting the existence of God : born with 
such an ingrained conviction that man was created for an end, 
that the universe is not a mad flickering phantasmagoria, de- 
void of purpose, and meaning blank nothing, as to be unable 
to compass the conception of the non-existence of the Supreme 
Mind. We deem this the form of intellect which is of all 
others the most substantial and healthful. And we are inclined 
to think that the mind "of Chalmers was radically of this type; 
the temporary delirium produced by D'Holbach would proba- 
bly have departed even without positive opposing argument, 
when his mind regained the power of calm thought. But, if 
this central fact is doubted, it must, first of all, be placed on 
an impregnable basis : and how can it be so, save by exhibit- 
ing the reasonableness of an acceptation of the ineradicable 
beliefs of humanity, of a trust in " the mighty hopes which 
make us men ?" It being placed beyond doubt that God ex- 
ists, and that the world has been established by Him, we see 
not how the mind is to advance to a more precise idea of His 
general government and our relation to Him, except by earnest 
contemplation of that small portion of His ways which we do 
know — in other words, by a consideration of the analogies of 
Butler. The ground thus cleared, the want and the reasonable- 
ness of Christianity demonstrated, the time has come to con- 
sider the actual historical evidence for its truth, considered as 
a strictly objective revelation ; and we know not whither to 
point the inquirer for this rather than to the clear, impartial, 



414 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

comprehensive summary by Paley of the testimony to the fact 
that Christ raised Lazarus, and rose Himself from the grave. 
If he believes that the mission of Jesus was divine, that His 
"living Father" sent Him, the whole system of revelation of 
which He is the corner-stone is seen to stand on an impregnable 
basis ; all that was delivered before the Christian era resting 
on His authority, all that has been delivered since secured by 
His promise. In the individual case, there may be a mode of 
arriving at the conviction of the divine truth of the Scriptures 
different from all this ; these Scriptures may be in such man- 
ner applied to the soul by the Holy Spirit, that their divine 
origin can not be doubted ; and it is equally true, that the pro- 
found accordance with the general order of things here on earth 
exhibited by these writings, the answers they embody to man's 
questionings, the supply they offer to man's wants, may be so 
explored and comprehended, that the result must be an assur- 
ance, that the whole phenomenon is utterly beyond explanation, 
save on the hypothesis that the ordinary dealings of Providence 
had in one case been diverged from., and the natural powers of 
man in one instance divinely supplemented. Yet, when the 
question is a simple question of fact ; when a man desires not, 
in the first instance, to enter the edifice of Christianity, but to 
learn whether the pillars of it were laid by God, in the same 
positive, independent, objective way. in which He created the 
world, we must consider the plain logical vindication of the 
historical fact, that a superhuman power accompanied the words 
of Jesus, a substantial form of Christian evidence. 

For it must be distinctly avowed on the one hand, and kept 
in view on the other, that the province of the Christian apolo- 
gist is limited. There is one sphere which he can never enter : 
the sphere of the operations of the Divine Spirit. He may 
show the consistence of Christianity, viewed as an external 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 415 

fact, with the laws of evidence ; but he can not open the eyes 
of "the world" to see that Spirit whom the Saviour declared 
its inability to see, he can not enable the natural man to dis- 
cern the things which are " spiritually discerned." We are far 
from asserting that the work of Christian apology has been 
exhausted ; but, when it has been, it will by possibility have 
achieved but two things : the proof of Christianity as a relig- 
ion once supernaturally given, and the proof of Christianity as 
a religion in all ages divinely sustained. The work still re- 
maining to be done in Christian apologetics is embraced in the 
second. That work Paley and his school did not certainly, 
save perhaps in a scarce perceptible degree, attempt ; but they 
did attempt, and with a success which can hardly be called in 
question, the former portion of Christian apologetics. They 
answered the question which men will naturally and fairly in 
the first instance put to the Christian — How do you know that 
your Master spoke in Judea, and spoke with supernatural 
authority ? And a satisfactory answer to this question must 
always embrace a proof of Christianity sufficient to content the 
sober mind, and to condemn the gainsayer. 

Our second remark is but a particular application of our 
first. It is, that in the present day there exists a disposition 
unduly to depreciate the apologists of last century. Against 
Paley in particular a very strong prejudice has begun to gain 
ground — a prejudice of perhaps slight importance in itself, and 
by no mieans absolutely without foundation in reference to 
Paley individually — but of decidedly injurious tendency in 
throwing discredit on the substantial service rendered by him 
to the Christian cause. His character, we think, is not difficult 
to define. It was not of the noblest type : but we have no 
hesitation in declaring it still further removed from one radi- 
cally ignoble. His mind was antithetically opposed to all that 



416 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

holds of poetry ; emotional energy of every sort was alien to 
his mental atmosphere ; his temperament was a uniform mean, 
an untroubled calm, removed at once from the glory and the 
gloom of storm. His intellect bore such relation to a mind 
like Paul's as a creed bears to a Prophecy of Isaiah — as the 
cold steel of a Roman legionary to the flaming sword of an 
angel. Joy to the measure of rapture, sorrow to the measure 
of despair, he could not feel ; the devotion of the martyr and 
the raving of the fanatic were alike removed from the balanced 
moderation of his mood ; the mighty passions which surge in 
the revolution or crash on the battle-field found no answering 
sympathy in his breast. And we perfectly agree with Foster, 
in thinking that this " order of mind is ill fitted to embody the 
highest grandeur of the Christian character, that the natural 
incapability of great emotions operates very strongly to pre- 
vent the prevalence of the Christian spirit." Yet it is just as 
plain to us, on the other hand, that Paley was radically an 
honest, able, worthy man. Of rough Yorkshire kindred, and 
humorous, homely ways, he was precisely of the stuff from 
which nature makes the substantial, deliberate, steady, saga- 
cious Englishman ; there was a certain sarcastic, though kindly 
ruggedness and plainness in his speech, pointedly opposed to 
insincerity or meanness ; a warm homely man, whom those 
who knew him loved, one totally devoid of affectation and 
pretense, with little ambition, and no greed. And his intel- 
lectual light, if very dry, was very powerful ; the error was 
subtle it could not pierce, the truth was sure which stood its 
scrutiny. To discern with conclusive certainty the vital points 
of a question ; to draw them out in clear logical sequence ; 
and to estimate their real and available value, few minds have 
had more power than Paley's. His style wants all poetic 
adornment and emotional fire ; yet it has a certain conclusive 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 4l7 

satisfying tone, and its perfect clearness lends it no mean 
charm; it makes us feel that it is not all base metal which 
does not glitter. We should have no feeling of uneasiness in 
maintaining that his mind, though wanting certain affinities 
with minds of the highest order which Johnson's did possess, 
was essentially more substantial and powerful than that which 
produced Easselas. If you look w^ell, moreover, you will find 
the moral system of each nearly similar ; the high and serene 
region of Christian holiness, as distinguished from virtue, 
neither can be said to have entered. We shall not object to 
Johnson's being entitled a hero ; but if his theory of virtue 
radically resolved itself into prudence, as Mr. Carlyle grants, 
we shall at least consider Mr. Kingsley in an untenable and 
absurd position, when he represents Paley's character as an 
unanswerable argument against his reasonings. But, indeed, 
the absurdity into which Mr. Kingsley, in the person of his 
hero Alton Locke, has suffered himself to fall, is complicated 
and glaring. To effect that confutation which the precise na- 
ture of the infidelity of last century required, an intellect such 
as Paley's was positively demanded. The faintest gleam of 
enthusiasm, the slightest warmth of passion, had neutralized 
its effect. It was the cool, " philosophic," enlightened intellect 
which found Christianity unsatisfactory ; it was the cold sharp 
edge of the scalpel of modern science which was declared to 
have exposed its unsoundness; unstable and excited minds, 
natures enthusiastic and fanciful, might be allured by this im- 
posing fable, but if you divested yourself of all prejudice and 
all passion, and turned on the Bible the same clear impartial 
light which you brought to the study of Euclid, it was not a 
matter of doubt that rejection of every notion of its inspiration 
would result. To meet such men, to dissipate such ideas, 
Paley was the very man. " Not so fast," he said, " I'm York 
18* 



418 THOMAS CHALMERS 

shire too : look at this phenomenon just as you look at any 
other in nature or history ; look at it on all sides, with pierc- 
ing scrutiny, but with fairness and without haste ; and then, 
whether convinced or not, declare honestly if it does not, at 
least, require a tremendous effort to consider it the fruit of 
imposture or frenzy ?" Since the days of Paley, infidelity has 
changed its tone ; the old jargon ahout priestcraft, imposture, 
and fanaticism, has well-nigh died away ; there is a caution 
now in assailing fairly and in front the facts of Christianity : 
and for this change there can be no doubt we are largely in- 
debted to him. Mr. Kingsley is a man of rich emotions and 
unquestioned earnestness ; but his intellectual force is puny to 
that of Paley ; and it is not with the best grace that a clergy- 
man of the Church of England puts into the mouth of a skeptic 
a vague and irrelevant charge against the character of him who 
wrote the Hor^e Paulince. The temperament of John Poster 
differed as essentially from that of Paley as Mr. Kingsley's, 
yet his verdict on Paley's achievement as a defender of Chris- 
tianity was as follows : — " It has been the enviable lot of here 
and there a iavored individual, to do some one important 
thing so well, that it shall never need to be done again : and 
we regard Dr. Paley's writings on the Evidences of Chris- 
tianity as of so signally decisive a character, that we should 
be content to let them stand as the essence and the close of the 
great argument on the part of its believers ; and should fee] 
no despondency or chagrin, if we could be prophetically certi- 
fied that such an eflficient Oiristian reasoner would never 
henceforward arise. ^Ve should consider the grand fortress 
of proof, as now raised and finished, the intellectual capital of 
that empire which is destined to leave the widest boundaries 
attained by the Roman far behind." We think that this re- 
quires qualification and circumscription, but it is a very im- 



T II O M A S C H A L M E 11 S . 419 

portant testimony, and may ultimately be found to be sub- 
stantially correct. 

We have seen that Chalmers passed through an ordeal of 
doubt; and such doubt as was peculiarly insnaring to his 
mathematical intellect and strong scientific tastes. That Har- 
mattan wind, in which it is said no soul of man can now live, 
had passed over him, with its doleful music and its burning 
sand ; but on the homeward side of the desert his joints were 
not loosed, his nerves were not unstrung, his frame had been 
too firmly knit to be relaxed, he sprang forward as if he had 
never drooped. And, on any theory of character, this is the 
grand proof of the vital force and natural vigor of a man. 
Doubt is the foe by vanquishing which the young knight of 
truth wins his spurs. Doubt is the lion guarding the palace 
of truth, which must be looked at, and dared, and controlled 
by the dauntless eye, but in passing beyond which alone are to 
be won the conquests of manhood. It had no power to petrify 
or paralyze Chalmers ; he inherited the instinctive knowledge 
that between the true, however difficult its proofs may be to 
exhibit, and the plausible, however difficult its disguise may 
be to pierce, the distance and diffisrence are simply infinite. 
It was a moral impossibility for him to have been a skeptic ; 
he would have forced his way to conscientious and hearty 
action, or sunk into madness or the grave ; doubt was to him 
agony, he felt it to be the negation of all work, the death of 
action if it was not its birth, aud he struggled toward truth 
as a giant might struggle through flames to his dearest 
treasure. 

In his twentieth year he was licensed to preach the Gospel. 

For the functions of the high calling to which he aspired, he 
felt no enthusiastic predilection. His thirst for knowledge 
was by no means satisfied, and the decided bent of his ambi- 



420 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

tion was still toward academic preferment. Instead of 
seeking work in his profession, he proceeded to Edinburgh, 
and studied at the university there during two sessions. Met- 
aphysical and mathematical subjects mainly engrossed his 
attention ; but we can not doubt that his reading was wide 
and varied. It is generally said that he was a man of meager 
knowledge, that he could lay no claim to the title — ^learned. 
There is truth in the assertion, but it is apt to render us obliv- 
ious to another truth of ho slight importance, by which it is 
to be qualified and supplemented. What is generally and 
technically understood by learning, he certainly did not pos- 
sess. But with the great questions of his day, and the general 
questions which, at all times, naturally agitate the human 
mind, he was abundantly acquainted : and the impetuous force 
of his own genius was sufficient to overpower and render 
invisible even what knowledge of books he did possess. His 
native strength refused to be trammeled by the thoughts of 
other men ; he so completely fused in the fire of his own intel- 
lect what he obtained from others, every ingot was so per- 
fectly melted, that it became impossible to recognize it in that 
molten torrent. And of the pedantry of learning he was per- 
fectly, we venture to say, felicitously, void. If he found good 
wheat lying around him, he deemed it to the full as valuable 
and fit for use as if it had lain three thousand years in the 
brain of a mummy ; if common sense and plain evidence set 
their stamp on a fact or argument, he did not care to affix to 
it the seal of antiquity. We saw him deeply influenced by 
the literature and ideas of the French Revolution ; we found 
him rejoicing in the sublime abstractions of Edwards ; we 
found him plunged in the surges of doubt by D'Holbach, and 
rescued by the strong arms of the great apologists of his own 
or the preceding age. And now, for two years, during which 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 421 

he engaged very sparingly in ministerial work, he led the life 
of a student ; a life which, in his case, could not be idle. We 
must not forget, besides, that he had mastered French, and 
carried his studies into the rich mathematical literature of 
that language ; his scientific acquirements, lastly, were becom- 
ing more and more extensive and profound. If not learned, 
he was certainly a man of very great information. 

We are compelled now to pass lightly over what is yet one 
of the most interesting and characteristic portions of the his- 
tory of Chalmers; that, namely, which embraces the first few 
years of his incumbency in Kilmany, and during which, amid 
scorn and conflict, he taught mathematics and chemistry in St. 
Andrews. 

Looking over the whole period, we can not but think that, 
with all its eccentricity, and with even a certain degree of dis- 
pleasing extravagance, there is in it much to admire. So 
great and healthful is the young strength, that it must, with 
all its exuberance, attract the sympathies of the healthful and 
strong. A surging, insatiable energy characterizes the time. 
It seems a pleasure to him to find hills in his way, for the 
mere opportunity of grasping and hurling them aside ; his 
toil and his enjoyment rise together ; he is a perfervid Scot, a 
lion rampant: mathematical studies, chemical studies, consider- 
able metaphysical studies, parochial duties, university struggles, 
book-making on an important scale, and much more, are insuf- 
ficient even to damp his first youthful ardor. His intellectual 
powers, too, have not been outrun by his energy ; he has given 
unquestionable proofs of a rare order of talent : the speedy 
and joyous subjugation of every new science which came in 
his way, the suggestion of a theory upon which, and perhaps 
upon which alone, Scripture and geology can be shown to be 
in harmony, the acquisition of a clear, glowing, and finely 



422 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

balanced style. There is sufficient proof, also, that he has 
already conceived, in outline, a whole scheme of Christian evi- 
dence. Lastly, and of all most decisive, he has begun to make 
his influence distinctly felt among the men who came within 
its sphere; Chalmers of Kilmany has become one to whom 
eyes are turned, and concerning whom expectations are formed ; 
the invisible crown set by nature on his brow is slowly wax- 
ing visible. And whatever may be doubted, it is certain that 
his moral qualities are of the kingly order. Courage to defy 
a whole university, tenderness to weep in the garden at Blen- 
heim, enthusiastic loyalty both in the pulpit and in the ranks, 
an ever open hand, wakeful and ardent sympathy with all that 
is high, and pure, and healthful ; these, and similar traits of 
nobleness, can not fail to evince that here is another of those 
whom, from the ancient time, nature has intended for trust, 
honor and love. 

But it must be conceded that, in an estimate of the character 
and powers of Chalmers during this youthful period, no ex- 
press reference is necessary to Christianity : Chalmers, in fact, 
was then a Christian pastor, in a sense and manner which, we 
think, is now becoming obsolete. The last century produced 
in Scotland a form, we should, perhaps, rather say a semblance, 
of Christianity, which will probably never re-appear. It was 
the result of the general decay of earnestness over the land, 
and the sickly flowering of a sentimental and wordy philoso- 
phistic morality. From the religion of the Puritan and Cove- 
nanter, there was a recoil ; to be virtuous was good and fair, 
honor and truth were to be commended, sublime benevolence 
was to be preached ; but to defy earth and hell for your belief, 
to worship God under the mist of the mountain corrie, or 
mount the scaffold rather than throw a sand-grain in the eye 
of conscience, were the follies of bigotry and excitement, pro- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 423 

duced endless commotion, and even endangered the interests 
of general morality and respectable society. The great dis- 
tinctive doctrines of Christianity were, probably, in some 
sense true ; to deny them altogether would utterly stultify 
the Bible ; but they were to be quietly considered incompre- 
hensible, and, as strictly esoteric mysteries, to be carefully 
excluded from public ministrations. Who is not familiar with 
the watchwords of the honey-mouthed school, which came then 
to occupy the pulpits of the church of Knox ? Virtue its own 
reward, white-robed innocence descending from heaven (in no 
great haste), decorum and decency, prim of visage and trim 
of garb, the enlightenment of the age, the happiness of the 
greatest number, flowed blandly forth as the preaching of 
Christianity. The art of the preacher then was softly to mouth 
truism, skillfully to gild commonplace. That school produced 
Blair. It is interesting to obsei"ve what it made of Paul. We 
have happened to see a sermon or two in which the attempt 
was made to depict him as a Christian orator. The fiery and 
urgent man, whose words flame and burn on the page, who 
startled the philosophic serenity of the sages of Athens, and 
uttered his grand song of triumph in the very scowl of Nero, 
who could not open his lips without speaking of Jesus Christ 
and Him crucified, who abandoned, in express terms, as differ- 
ent in idea from Christianity, the wisdom of Greece and the 
morality of law, was represented standing, in polite and grace- 
fiil attitude, and lecturing Felix, for more than half an hour, 
on virtue, mercy, justice, and respectability in general, cau- 
tiously avoiding the " mysteries " of the Christian religion, 
and recommending it to his weak hearer in a soft and harm- 
less garb borrowed from Seneca. The effect over the country 
was simple and decisive. The heart of the Scottish people 



424 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

turned from the modern school : the popular instinct named 
it — moderate. 

It may be thought strange that such a man as Chalmers 
could ever have been a follower of such a school as this. 
Yet it is a fact admitting of no question. Christianity had 
never fairly laid its grasp on his heart ; he had never pro- 
foundly considered "whether it was the real living Christianity 
he had or no. He is a striking example of the not unusual 
phenomenon of a man whose natural force and nobleness will 
be unparalyzed by any influence of school or creed. But it 
may be that this easy-suiting garment called Christianity is 
not really adapted to display the herculean mold of his limbs ; 
it may be in the garb of the warrior, in the old mail of the 
martyr, that we can best discern the strength and majesty of 
his frame. Let us proceed. 

At about the age of thirty, Chalmers engaged to write the 
article Christianity for the Edinburgh Encyclopeedia. In the 
midst of the study and composition connected with this article, 
he was attacked by a severe illness, which confined him for a 
period of four months. It was an era in his history ; the 
most important era of all. It was from it that he dated what 
was to him, and appears to us, the great fact of his life — his 
conversion. 

Death had, of late, more than once passed by Chalmers, 
casting on him the pale glare of his eye ; one after another 
of his brothers and sisters had been carried to the grave. At 
length the impartial foot seemed to be drawing near to his own 
threshold ; he felt no coward fear, but, with an earnest calm- 
ness that he had not hitherto known, he began to think. Fear 
was no important agent in the mental revolution which ensued ; 
the state of mind indicated by Bunyan's Slough of Despond, 
he expressly says, he never experienced. His nature was of 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 425 

the, nobler sort, v/hich is drawn by a glimpse of heaven, and 
that a heaven of holiness, rather than by an un vailing of hell. 
He could not but discern that there had been something in the 
breasts of the early Christians which was not in his. Eternity, 
in its unmeasured vastness, enwrapped his mind ; time, seen 
against its burning radiance, seemed dream-like and filmy. 
The virtue of philosophy, he began profoundly to suspect, was 
not the holiness of God. The power of this virtue, too, to 
do much toward the regeneration of the world, became ques- 
tionable. His old friend Godwin, in discoursing of justice, 
had spoken thus : " A comprehensive maxim which has been 
laid down upon the subject, is, ' that we should love our neigh- 
bor as ourselves.' But this maxim, though possessing consid- 
erable merit as a popular principle, is not modeled with the 
strictness of philosophical accuracy." Chalmers hardly found 
this maxim, defective as it might be, conformed to in the 
parish of Kilmany ; all his appeals on the subject, in fact, had 
been received with imperturbable calmness ; he had discerned 
no effect whatever from lectures, however impassioned, on 
virtue and benevolence. In his ow^n heart, and in his sphere 
of work, something seemed essentially wrong. And so there 
commenced a w^ork in the privacy of his closet, which may, 
without any figure, be said to have resulted in the kindling of 
a new vital energy in the center of his being. Its progress 
was gradual, but every step was taken irrevocably ; its con- 
clusion found Chalmers transformed from a historic into a vital 
Christian, from a philosophic into a Christian pastor. Christ 
had become to him all in all. We shall not intrude into the 
privacy of his closet while the great change is taking place. 
We shall not attempt to trace the fading of old things into 
oblivion and death, and their gradual resurrection as all things 
become new in Christianity. We shall not venture to watch 



426 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the soul in its pleadings with God, until, at last, that wonder- 
ful passage bears personal reference to Chalmers, " the king- 
dom of God is within you." But we can not forbear remarking 
the appearance of weakness which presents itself when we 
look into that closet. It recalls the " hysterical tears of a 
soldier like Cromwell," the "delusion," whose strength "scarcely 
any mad-house could equal," of Bunyan ; there is not, certainly, 
such intensity of feeling, but the sense of a divine presence 
and agency is the same. We hear him earnestly pleading for 
pardon, though his life has been most virtuous ; he calls him- 
self a sinner, though always respectable ; he trembles, although 
surely God is good. His soul is prostrate. What can we 
hope for from the like of this 1 What advantage has it over 
the most "melancholy whimpering" of fanaticism, of which 
Chalmers could once speak ? May we not apprehend a total 
relaxation of energy, a total shriveling of intellect "? Time 
will answer the questions. Meanwhile, one point of consider- 
able moment may be remarked. It is before the Infinite God 
he stoops ! It may be deemed possible, that conscious alliance 
with the Infinite will not make him weak among the finite ; 
possibly, when he once feels that the eye of God is actually 
fixed on him, the light of all other eyes, whether in wrath or 
in applause, may grow dim ; perhaps, when he lays down the 
philosophic armor in which he has trusted, he may go forth 
in the strength of weakness, mightier than before. " 'Tis con- 
science," said Coleridge, " that makes cowards of us all ; but 
oh ! it is conscience, too, which makes heroes of us all." 

Times are changed in the manse and parish of Kilmany. 
The minister is changed, and many changes follow. One by 
one, the worldly aspirations that have fired the breast of Chal- 
mers fide away ; reluctantly but resolutely, the eye is averted 
from university honors ; reluctantly but irreversibly, the de- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 427 

termination is taken, and the mathematical volume closed. 
One great idea embraces his soul like an atmosphere, the glory 
of God ; one great work lies before him, to manifest that glory 
in the good of man. His soul now gushes forth at all seasons 
in prayer : his aim with himself is no longer to preserve an 
unblemished walk before men, and to have the testimony of 
his heart that he possesses the manly virtue of the schools ; his 
aim is the inward heaven of Christianity, the mental atmos- 
phere that angels breathe, unsullied purity of thought and 
emotion in that inmost dwelling where hypocrisy can not come : 
his aim with his people is no longer merely to repress dishon- 
esty, to promote sobriety, and produce respectability in gen- 
eral ; it is to turn them to righteousness, that they may be his 
joy and rejoicing in the day of the Lord ; it is to array them 
in that robe, purer than seraphs' clothing, in which not even 
the eye of God can find a stain ; it is to lead them with him 
as a people into the light of God's countenance. 

His parishioners, meanwhile, are astonished. They see by 
" the glory in his eye" that some strange new light has dawned 
upon him. They sat listless while he descanted on the beauty 
of virtue, but they can not sit unmoved while his heart glows 
within him, and his face seems suffused with a transfiguring 
radiance, as he unvails the beauty of holiness, and turns their 
eyes to the wonders of Infinite Love streaming through Jesus 
down upon the world. Nor can their apathy maintain itself, 
when he carries his ministrations into the domestic circle, and 
with burning earnestness presses home individually the offers 
and the appeals of the Gospel. The parish of Kilmany glows 
with returning Christianity like the fields of opening summer. 
For it is no partial change that has come over Chalmers. 
Partial characteristics were never his ; halfness went against 
the grain of his nature ; he had held all his beliefs firmly. 



428 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

And now, in the manhood of his powers, when the feeling was 
beginning slowly to permeate Scotland, that a man of master- 
ing intellect had arisen in the land, after he had long and dili- 
gently walked in the path of this world, he was arrested as by 
a blaze of light from heaven, smitten awhile to the ground, 
and then raised up a new man, a Christian. He had formerly 
known the God of the fatalist, and had bowed, in a certain 
ecstatic awe, before Him ; now he knew the God of the Chris- 
tian, and believed Him to be love. He had never worshiped 
sinful self; now even righteous self was crucified. Ah ! it was 
a great day for Scotland when Chalmers, in all the might of 
his manhood, became vitally Christian. 

It was about this time, in August, 1812, that Chalmers mar- 
ried Miss Grace Pratt. Of his domestic concerns it is unne- 
cessary to say more than that his home was one of deep and 
tranquil comfort, in all embarrassment, toil, and opposition, a 
sanctuary of inviolable repose. 

But his fame has been extending ; the news that some mys- 
terious change has passed over the minister of Kilmany has 
thrilled electrically over Scotland. Such oratory has not been 
heard in these parts in the memory of man. It speedily be- 
comes known that one of the greatest preachers in the Church 
of Scotland ministers weekly in a sequestered valley near the 
estuary of the Tay. A feeling of deep gladness begins to per- 
vade the evangelical party, as the new leader, strong and in- 
domitable as a youthful Hannibal, steps forward to take the 
command. And hark, from the respectable, soft-going, mod- 
erately-religious ministers, what voice is that ? " As for Chal- 
mers, he is mad !" What a piece of testimony is here ! 
How decisive, how comforting ! " Paul, thou art beside 
thyself." 

This fortuitous sneer about madness is not void of suggest- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 429 

ive meaning. Look at the great workers and warriors, the 
great thinkers and governors, all who have been of the kings 
of the earth : does not their power, in one universal aspect of 
it, admit of definition thus — A force as of madness in the hand 
of reason 1 In our age, we find two men who pointedly sug- 
gest this combination : Thomas Chalmers, and, perhaps still 
more forcibly, Thomas Carlyle. 

But the sequestered Fifeshire valley can not retain Scot- 
land's greatest preacher. The Tron Church in Glasgow be- 
comes vacant ; and after a sharp contest, in which he is pitted 
against Principal Macfarlane, Chalmers is appointed its minis- 
ter. Calmly balancing arguments, he concludes that the hand 
of God is in the arrangement, and that it is his duty to go ; 
but he is well aware that he leaves tranquillity for turmoil, 
the trust and tenderness of personal friendship for the din and 
vacancy of public station and applause ; he bids adieu to his 
quiet valley and its one hundred and fifty families with deep 
and honest sadness. " Oh !" he said, long afterward, " there 
was more tearing of the heart-strings at leaving the valley of 
Kilmany, than at leaving all my great parish of Glasgow." 

It was some time after quitting Kilmany, that Chalmers in 
an address to his former parishioners, bore that emphatic and 
weighty testimony to the power of evangelical Christianity as 
a moral agency, which has been so often quoted and referred 
to. He distinctly declared that his preaching of mere virtue 
had been absolutely powerless ; but that the proclamation of 
God's love in Christ Jesus was at once mighty. We accept 
his words as an additional and important attestation, that the 
simple truths of the Gospel of Jesus are gifted with a power 
to lay hold upon and impress healthy and unsophisticated in- 
tellects, which belongs to no moral or philosophical dogmas. 
In Chalmers, Christianity was seen in its ancient freshness, 



430 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

beauty, and power ; and in our century he foun:. its might to 
purify the hearts and lives of men, to breathe moral health 
over a people, to radiate light around, as prevailing as when 
the star led the way to Bethlehem. He was, and any man 
like him will be, a center of beneficent influence. Such talents 
as his must ever continue rare ; but think what were the effect 
to be looked for from a pastorate, whose members all resem- 
bled him in the single but paramount circumstance of his god- 
liness. Imagine the land sown with pastors kindled as by 
divine fire with that ambition which God, in a promise un- 
speakably glorious, has appointed for them : " They that turn 
many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and 
ever." We will maintain that it lies within the discernible 
and traceable power of a truly Christian ministry, to shed over 
our land a brightness as of the resurrection morning. The na- 
tiou'would live anew ; the golden day would break ; the bale- 
ful forms and influences of crime would be smitten ; and infi- 
dels, as they saw the serpents which now cast their deadly 
coils round the limbs of the nation, writhing, with\dazed eyes 
and relaxing hold, in the overpowering light, would be aston- 
ished and silenced. 

From the time of his settlement in the west may be dated 
the commencement of that intellectual kingship which Chal- 
mers can be said to have long exercised over the great body 
of the Scottish nation. He now steps forth into that arena 
where are the severest tests of greatness. He becomes the 
cynosure of a city and people ; he reads applause in every eye ; 
he hears it from every tongue. Now is the time to know 
what he really is. Does Chalmers in elevation seem in his 
natural station and atmosphere ? Does he, amid noise and 
pretense, lose the power of distinguishing and prizing real 
work 1 Can he gauge and measure fame, and put it to its 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 431 

uses like any other dispensation of God 1 Can he distinguish 
between adulation streaming in from all the winds, and 
which, in all its varieties, is either mere vacant sound or self- 
ishness set to music, from the still but immortal voice of 
friendship 1 Does he give indications of an unsettled, weakly- 
enthusiastic, or fanatical mind ? Are his air and attitude those 
of one who has drugged his intellect with an " opiate delusion," 
and rushes wildly and vaguely on, with haste for energy, and 
vociferous dograatism for thought'? These are fair and im- 
portant questions ; the answers will gradually unfold them- 



No sooner do we find him fairly in the midst of the tumult 
and glare of his Glasgow popularity ; no sooner do we perceive 
his words swaying the minds of thousands, his house the center 
of admiring throngs, his fame a theme and topic in the city, 
than we are arrested by an instance of retired and tender affec- 
tion. There is a member of his congregation, aged twenty. 
The delicacy and beauty of his thoughts, the purity of his as- 
pirations, the general nobleness of his nature, draws toward 
him the heart of Chalmers. There springs up between them 
a close, confiding, boy-like friendship ; tender and impassioned 
as any friendship of romance, yet cemented by the holier sym- 
pathy of Christian love. Their " loves in higher love endure ;" 
to endure forever. We can not but deem it a strange specta- 
cle in our hard-working century, where ideals are so few ; — 
Chalmers, the most renowned preacher, perhaps in the world, 
and certainly in Scotland, walking by the side of his boy par- 
ishioner, and pouring out his heart in all the endearments of 
a soft, almost womanly aflection. If you would thoroughly 
know the man, look long upon that spectacle. The trumpet- 
ing of fame brings no comfort to him, he permits it to die 
away in the far distance ; but now he finds one heart where 



432 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

pure love dwells, he knows that this at le-ast is real, he folds 
his friend to his breast in an ecstasy of fondness, he walks by 
his side under the blue sky, listening to his voice, in deep se- 
rene delight, as to a strain of spiritual music. Or look into 
his closet, and see the friends on their knees before God, the 
fiery Chalmers and the mild Thomas Smith, to whom his heart 
is soft as a fountain. Smith gradually faded away in a con- 
sumption ; often, with tearful eye, did his pastor bend over his 
bed, or kneel by its side ; and when, at last, he lay in death's 
pallor, the strong, manly face of Chalmers was bathed in uncon- 
trolable tears. From of old it has been known, that valor 
and tenderness form the noblest and most beautiful union ; the 
lion heart and strength, guided by maiden gentleness ; perhaps 
all the true and brave are tender. We feel this simple story 
of his friendship for Thomas Smith bring us into closer knowl- 
edge, and, as it were, contact with the heart and nature of 
Chalmers, than would the mere record of his fame, if echoed 
through centuries. 

It was in the close of the year 1815, that his renown in 
Glasgow culminated. He then delivered his fixmed Astro- 
nomical Discourses. They were preached on week-days, yet 
the audience crowded the church. There was a reading-room 
opposite the edifice : during the time of delivery it stood va- 
cant; the merchant and the politician pouring out, to hang 
breathless on the lips of Chalmers. His style was now fully 
formed, and was, in many respects, extraordinary ; perfectly 
dissimilar from any other English style, unallied in diction and 
cadence to any foreign language, it was the native growth of 
his mind, an original birth of genius. And whatever minor or 
particular exceptions may be taken to that style, we can not 
regard it as a matter open to dispute, that it is possessed of 
marvelous power and grandeur. Massive and gorgeous, ex- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 433 

pressive, often graphic, yet with a certain billowy regularity 
of sentence and rolling cadence of rhythm, it was in the hand 
of its own magician a really mighty weapon. Exuberant to 
what in written composition seems diifuseness, it might, if used 
by a weakling, sound like bombast ; but its exuberance is that 
of tropic woods, and ocean waves, and rainbowed cataracts, the 
teeming and varied opulence of a mind of boundless sympathy, 
the grand luxuriance of nature ; and when the curbless intens- 
ity of the preacher's fire burned in its every word, when the 
glittering eye, and glowing features, and fiery gesticulation, 
proved that even its abundance sufficed not to body forth the 
earnestness of Chalmers, all thought of bombast or diffuseness 
fled, and the effect was tremendous. The true power of the 
orator was his ; he could subject men not merely to his reason 
but to his will. The witnesses to the effect of his eloquence 
are so numerous and explicit, that doubt is no longer possible 
on the subject. When the thunder was at its height, when his 
eye blazed with that strange watery gleam of which we hear, 
men involuntarily moved their bodies, and, though in postures 
which would ordinarily occasion pain, were unconscious of a 
sensation ; when there was a pause, a sigh arose from the con- 
gregation ; strong men, even learned men, wept. 

We may form some conception of the impression made by 
these Dicourses, when even now we consider their general 
tenor. The theme, whatever may be said concerning its argu- 
mentative value or treatment, is sublime ; it is handled, too, 
precisely in the way to give it power in the pulpit ; every point 
is brought out with such boldness, that no eye can fail to see 
it; there is no wire-drawing, no soft murmuring, no delicate 
penciling, no easy meandering ; each vast wave comes rolling 
on, fringed with its own gorgeous foam, and echoing its own 
thunder. If we consent to place ourselves under the wizard 

19 



434 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

eye of the orator, if at one moment we mark its rapt and fiery- 
gleam, as if lit .in sympathy with those seraph eyes which it 
saw looking from the emjDyrean ; if, at another, we watch the 
deeper softness of its azure glow, while it seems to gaze on 
Mercy unfolding her wings ; and if we surrender ourselves to 
the combination of influences, as voice, features, and subject, 
are all at last in climax, it will surely be no longer impossible 
to conceive the effect, when the ocean billow, after long gather- 
ing, broke. 

An elaborate and detailed criticism of these sermons is now 
superfluous. Many objections have been taken to their logic ; 
and Foster stands, doubtless, not alone, in objecting to their 
style. YoT our own part, we confess that our admiration is 
intense. They appear to us to have the true poetic glow ; that 
fusing, uniting fire burns over them, whose gleam compels you 
to drop your measuring-line or gauging apparatus, and utter 
the word — genius. To accompany the preacher in his high 
flight, seems to us like sailing with that archangel whom 
Eichter, in his dream, saw bearing the mortal through the 
endless choirs and galaxies of immensity ; only that here we 
do not tremble and cry out at the overpowering spectacle of 
God's infinitude, for the softening light of the Cross falls con- 
tinually around us. And, after all we have heard, the logic 
of these marvelous Discourses is to us satisfactory. It has 
been said that the argument against which they are leveled is 
weak and obsolete. We suspect it is neither ; save in a sense 
applying to infidel arguuients in general. Walking in a still 
autumn night in the country, by the faintly-rustling corn-field 
or the lonely wood, and gazing upward to the illimitable vault, 
where the stars in their courses walk silent and beautiful, and 
where the milky-way, with its myriad worlds, lies along the 
purple of night like a breath of God's nostrils, is it unnatural 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 435 

for the human being to say, Can the Son of the Almighty have 
come to die for atoms such as I, in such an atom as is this 
world of ours '? If such a thought is powerless with many 
minds, we suspect it is very forcible with others : we know it 
is so with some. And after calm reflection, what we do finally 
arrive at in the case, as the seemly and reasonable attitude of 
him who is a feeble and puny denizen of earth, yet a spirit of 
thought and immortality 1 It appears to be twofold. Look- 
ing toward the stars, it is seemly for him to bow his head in 
lowliness and gratitude, and say, with the monarch minstrel, 
" What is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of 
man that Thou regardest him f But then, looking to the corn 
God has raised to nourish him, the animals over which God 
has made him king, the fair world He has from of old prepared 
for him, the still princely retinue or army of ficulties he has 
given him, to master it and to count the stars, he may turn with 
reasonable faithful joy to the Son of David, and listen to Him 
as he says, " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; 
they toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, 
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, 
which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He 
not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith V This seems 
the true attitude. This last is the satisfactory answer to the 
infidel argument, and it is this answer which Chalmers, with 
all the force lent it by modern science, re-enunciated. The 
telescope may keep men humble, but it can not crush him into 
insignificance ; the microscope shows ever how the world of 
littleness stretches away, as if to infinitude, under his feet. 
And if the might of Omnipotence can arrange, in their un- 
speakable delicacy, the tendrils of the corals in the depths of 
ocean, and bring to maturity colonies and nations, in all the 



436 T H O M A S C H A L M E R S . 

animation of their life and the glow of their costume, within 
the bosom of a flower, and reach a perfection of beauty, after 
which art toils at what may be called an infinite distance, in 
the rainbow He hangs in every mountain brook, will He not 
wipe away a stain as if from His own forehead, will He not 
humble His great adversary on a territory He hoped he had 
won, will He not amend the one imperfection in the world — 
sin 1 And is it not in consistence with the glory of His name, 
that, thus to vindicate Himself, He has made a display of 
mercy and condescension at which heaven and earth may stand 
agaze ? 

Chalmers had now fairly reached the pinnacle of Scottish 
renown. The heart of the populace throbbed responsively to 
his eloquence ; and from perhaps the highest personal author- 
ity then in Scotland, from Jeffrey of the Edinburg Eeview, it 
received this testimony : " I know not what it is, but there is 
something altogether remarkable about that man. It reminds 
me more of what one reads of as the effect of the eloquence of 
Demosthenes, than any thing I ever heard." 

And now, when his Astronomical Discourses had, with far- 
reaching trumpet-flourish, heralded his approach, he proceeded 
to London. 

On the day after his arrival in the metropolis, he preached 
in Surrey Chapel. The service began at eleven ; at seven in 
the morning the place was filled. At length Chalmers ascends 
the pulpit, and all eyes are centered there. The sermon com- 
mences. The face of the preacher has a certain heavy look, 
over its pale, rough-hewn, leonine lineaments ; his eyelids 
droop slightly, and his eyes have something at once dreamy 
and sad in their expression ; his voice is thin, somewhat broken, 
unimpressive ; his tone may be called drawling, and his dia- 
lect is broadly, almost unintelligibly provincial. The London 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 43*7 

audience sits cool and business-like, not given to tumultuous 
emotion, and accustomed to moral essays ; eye meets eye in 
half-disappointed surmise. But look, Chalmers is beginning 
to move; he gradually works himself into the heart of his 
subject ; his voice is becoming loud, rich, impassioned : the 
Londoners sit still unmoved, but now no eyes are wandering ; 
the preacher warms, the latent heat within is beginning to be 
evolved ; he curbs his spirit sternly, but it will bear him away : 
his auditors are silent, a consciousness of some strange enchain- 
ing power begins to pervade the place, but the light in the 
thousand eyes fixed on Chalmers is still in great measure that 
of criticism ; the Londoners still know where they are : the 
orator warms swiftly to white heat ; his face is radiant with 
earnestness ; the distending eyeball swims ; at last the fire 
•within lights in it that wondrous watery gleam which tells that 
the spirit of Chalmers is in the last passion and agony of its 
might : his audience have forgotten where they sit ; they bend 
forward in simultaneous assent to his every paragraph ; he has 
chained them to the chariot-wheels of his eloquence. 

Report of the new wonder flies over London. Fashion hears 
of him in her glittering saloons ; senators and peers speak of 
him in their halls and cabinets. The highest and gayest in the 
land crowd to hear him. "All the world," writes Wilberforce, 
in his journal, " wild about Chalmers." Chancellors and lords 
desire to be introduced to him ; the lord-mayor visits him ; 
mighty London seems to do him homage. 

The spectacle is strange ; the test the man has to stand is 
searching. From the still and sequestered vale of Kilmany, 
he has ascended to the highest summit of cotemporary fame. 
He was all unregarded in his quiet parish ; he has now the 
great ones of the earth becking and applauding round him ; 
there is a shout in hii^ cars as if he were more than human. 



438 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Let US not fail to perceive the danger and difficulty of his situ- 
ation. The assenting voice of one fellow-creature has been 
said by one of the best of judges to " strengthen even infin- 
itely" any opinion a man may have formed, and a flattering 
opinion of one's-self is so easy to strengthen ; amid the vocif 
erous plaudits of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, to re- 
tain one's self-estimate, undiminished, unmagnified, unwaver- 
ing, is difficult indeed. And how many, even of the power- 
fiiUy-minded, have failed, when popular applause, that sun 
whose stroke so often is madness, has centered its rays upon 
them. Edward Irving was no ordinary man ; yet he who, in 
his noble and beautiful eulogium on this "freest, brotherliest, 
bravest human soul" he ever met, bears witness to his force 
and healthiness, tells us also that he swallowed the intoxicat- 
ing poison of fame, and had not " force of natural health" to 
cast it out. Edinburgh celebrity contributed largely to the 
ruin of Burns ; applause, every one knows, inflated and befool- 
ed Rousseau ; Byron, unconscious perhaps of the fact, and in 
"words scornfully denying it, was really the slave of fame — we 
might almost say, of mode ; and to what length might we not 
extend the list ? We remember a masterly touch in Ovid's 
description of Phseton, and his unhappy ride. The chariot has 
just reached the zenith. Hitherto the aspiring driver has 
kept a tight rein, better or worse, with fair success. But now 
he looks from his imperial station on the vast round of the 
earth ; its oceans, its forests, its mountains, its cities, are out- 
spread below him ; all seem to gaze toward him, and drink 
glory from his eye. He can not endure it ; his brain reels, 
his eye swims, the weight of his office oppresses his individual- 
ity, the fi-re snorting coursers drag the reins from his relaxing 
hand, and tear away after their own mad will. The man who 
can see the world gazing at him unmoved, is the man intended 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 439 

by nature to be gazed at ! Chalmers triumphantly bears the 
test. Let the world say what it will, he knows he is just 
Chalmers of Kilmany, nothing more nor less — one whose 
power, be it what it may, neither inflates nor collapses in the 
popular gale. All who approach him find him simple, unas- 
suming, devout. Nay, his instinct of reality is rather offended 
than otherwise ; his heart whispers that much of this tumult 
is mere vocal vacancy. As principalities and powers cluster 
round him, he stands quiet and self-possessed, unabashed, un- 
astonished, unalarmed ; his greatness has its source within. 
No man could more thoroughly weigh popular acclaim, and 
more firmly pronounce it wanting ; beautiful ardors and rap- 
turous admirations would have been somewhat damped in 
London, had his ultimate definition of such matters been, 
by any chance heard — "the hosaunas of a driveling gener- 
ation !" 

We must add one other remark ere accompanying Chal- 
mers back to Scotland. There was a day when he spoke of 
"literary distinction" as his '-pride and consolation ; " there 
was a day when this London notoriety would have appeared 
almost sublime. Is it unfair to suppose that the light of that 
Eye which, though invisible, he now seems ever to see resting 
on him, has shed an equalizing radiance over chancellors and 
peasants, and made sublunary approbation a matter of quite 
secondary moment 1 

Returning to Glasgow, his popularity continues at the same 
unprecedented height as before ; his study becomes a presence- 
chamber for guests of all ranks and from all quarters. But 
it is never through the general eye that you can really see 
Chalmers ; it is when you mark him unbosoming himself, in 
tender, artless affection, to his sister Jane, or warming the 
hearts of all around him by his hearty geniality and rough 



440 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

sagacity, or turning from the despised " popularity of stare, 
and pressure, and animal heat," to look for any plant which 
the Lord of the vineyard has honored him by using his hand 
in planting. 

Of this last we have an instance which is too beautiful and 
of too profound significance to be omitted ; he who can not read 
in it the true nature and the intrinsic nobleness of Chalmers 
can interpret no biographic trait whatever. A gentleman 
named Wright, an intimate acquaintance, meets him one day 
in company. Usually the center of cheerfulness and pleasure, 
he is to-day downcast and heavy. Mr. Wright happening to 
walk with him on the way home ventures to inquire whether 
he is ill. He is well enough, but must confess he is not at 
rest. His heart is grieved. " It is a matter," he says, " that 
presses very grievously upon me. In short, the truth is, I 
have mistaken the way of my duty to God, in at all coming 
to your city. I am doing no good. God has not blessed, and 
is not blessing my ministry here." He remembers Kilmany and 
its one hundred and fifty families ; he thinks how sure and how 
beautiful the work of God was there ; he has exchanged his earn- 
est ministrations from house to house, for inevitable and perpet- 
ual visits of ceremony or entertainment, his parish church, filled 
with devout and humble hearers, for a mixed and staring 
throng, many of whose members come to see the preacher. 
It is like going from reality, which he loves as his heart's 
blood, to hollowness and pretense, which he hates with in- 
grained and immeasurable hatred. His heart sinks at the 
idea that in his hands the work of a Christian pastor should 
degenerate into emotional excitement or literary admiration ; 
that his portion is to be mere earthly renown^ instead of the 
glory of having turned even one to righteousness. His eye 
is where a Christian pastor's should be ; fame, adulation, pop- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 441 

ularity, w 11, he knows, be shriveled up in the first breath of 
eternity, while an immortal soul, saved by his means, will be 
a gem in a crown eternally brightening. In friendly simplicity 
and greatness of heart, seeking the relief which every noble 
nature finds in sympathy, he reveals his sorrow to his friend. 
And lo ! he finds in his answer a solace which he little expects. 
Mr. Wright details to him a case in which he knows the min- 
istry of Chalmers to have been effectual in rousing a soul to 
deep personal godliness, in making it flee to Christ for salva- 
tion. " Ah," exclaims his delighted and grateful listener, " ah, 
Mr. Wright, what blessed, what comforting news you give 
me ; for really I was beginning to fail, from an apprehension 
that I had not been acting according to the will of God in 
coming to your city." 

We have still, however, to contemplate Chalmers in his 
principal aspect as a force and influence among men. That 
which, in our estimation, gives to his career its highest grandeur, 
and ranks him with the great ones of time, is the tremendous 
power with which he grasped one vast idea : the idea of Chris- 
tianity in application to national existence, of the Christianiza- 
tion of the state. To use his own magnificent words, the aim 
of his life was to nurse the empire to Christianity. It is fine 
to see, as it were, his great heart throbbing wilh this sublime 
conception ; to mark how his enthusiasm always gushes out 
afresh as it comes before him ; to listen to the incidental tones 
of lyric rapture M-hich break from his lips, when the light of 
the mighty thought, as of the coming Christian morning, strikes 
along his brow. This is the idea which makes the life of 
Chalmers epic. The nineteenth century is marked by the tri- 
umphant march of science on the one hand, and by the awaken- 
ing of the peoples on the other. Banners innumerable have 
been unfolded as banners of national salvation; there has been 
19* 



442 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

the cloudy ensign of transcendentalisni • there has been the 
standard of mere science and political philosophy, with its 
meager diagrams and cold metallic luster ; there has been the 
black flag of atheism ; Chalmers, with the gait of a champion, 
stepped forward with the ancient banner, the old legend still 
burning on its massive folds as in letters of golden fire, " In 
Christ conquer !" Round that banner, in the age of science 
and democracy, he called us to rally, and told how the fight 
would go. 

But it was not only the dauntless valor and tireless perse- 
verance with which he proclaimed that Christianity alone can 
save the nations, which distinguished him. These might have 
characterized a very inferior man. It was his clear percep- 
tion of the position in which Christianity now stands to peoples, 
it was his essential agreement in the axioms on which he pro- 
ceeded, with the soundest and greatest intellects of this and 
all ages, it was his statesmanlike comprehension of the main 
outlines of the method by which Christianity is to be applied 
to national life, that stamped him as the highest practical 
Christian thinker of his age. Of an intellectual power which 
enabled him to sum and master the lessons science has taught, 
and the means science has provided, for the amelioration of 
the community, he was able to discern what was the place 
Christianity was to occupy in relation to these. Agreeing 
with all the master intellects among men, that it is only by 
the inspiration of moral life into a nation that its physical life 
can prosper, and diflfering from Mr. Carlyle only in that he 
deemed the one source of moral life a personal God, and the 
grand instrument of moral life the religion of Jesus, he 3^et did 
not turn with contemptuous indignation from the advocates of 
special scientific methods ; he took the different plan of sup- 
plementing their deficiency, of speaking the truth without 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 443 

which their systems were dead. He did not, with indignant 
stamp of his foot, shake to pieces as worthless the mechanism 
of science ; he said it was an invaluable, an indispensable 
mechanism ; but he brought a coal kindled in heaven to put it 
in motion, to inspire it with life, and spread over it a new and 
glorious light. In language of glowing poetry, he represents 
Christianity visiting earth from the celestial realms, her first 
and all-embracing object to bring to men treasures of immortal 
joy, yet, by a sublime necessity, scattering beatitude in the 
paths of mortal life. With the ancient heroic devotion, he 
toiled for the realization of his idea ; no old crusader or me- 
diaeval king strove more valiantly in faith or in patriotism, 
than he to be the Christian divine demanded by the nineteenth 
century. If it is the harmonizing, concentrating might of one 
great idea pervading a character and life, which are recognized 
as imparting to these an epic greatness, surely we can affirm 
such of the life and character of Chalmers. 

Descending to the practical application of his one life-effort, 
we find that it admits of easy and clear definition. With the 
glance of one who sees before and after, far along the centu- 
ries past and future, his high aim was, by one gigantic im- 
pulse, to raise the Church of his country to what the nation 
and the age required. Town and country he would divide 
into manageable parishes ; the Presbyterian mechanism of the 
kirk session he would bring to bear with its innate power and 
intimacy ; over all would preside a set of godly and energetic 
pastors, who would superintend and vitalize the whole. Thus, 
in a thousand streams, the very water of life would circulate 
through the veins of the nation. A personal intimacy and 
friendship would bind pastor to peasant, rank to rank; "the 
golden chain of life" would be unbroken, and it would be none 
the less beautiful, binding, or pleasant, that it was anchored 



444 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

within the vail. Over the land there would pass the breath 
of a moral renovation ; every other renovation would follow 
in benign and natural sequence ; it would look to heaven with 
one broad smile of peace and contentment, like the face of a 
strong man awakening to health after long sickness. 

His method of carrying out his plans in his own parish, the 
example he offered to the pastors of Scotland and the world 
of their efficacy, was perhaps the most triumphant portion of 
his whole acting in the matter. Here it is important to note 
him ; new discoveries of his intellectual energy and his moral 
worth dawn on us at every step. We saw formerly that, in 
the meeting of all the winds of fame, he could preserve unflut- 
tered his self-estimate, and work as calmly as in quiet Kil- 
many. He could stand alone. We learn now that he can 
draw others around him, work with them, and teach them to 
work. Here it is that the true kingly talent comes out. He 
knows the genuine worker, he attracts him toward himself, he 
strikes into him new fire ; he can light a sympathetic flame in 
the bosom of each with whom he acts, so that he becomes 
a miniature of himself. Every thing yields to his contagious 
energy ; the very Town Council of Glasgow assent to his 
views ; his subordinates follow him as the carriages follow the 
steam-engine. Chancellors and duchesses, and the tumult of 
crowds encircling Chalmers, might be gadflies round a mere 
gaudy sunflower : but we can not be deceived here. Look 
upon him in the heart of Glasgow, as he dives into noisome 
vennels, or feels his way up dark winding stairs, seeking out 
destitution, seeing the fact in its own nakedness, looking his 
foe in the face, and bringing to smite it that one weapon he 
bears, the sword of the Spirit. Then you see Chalmers. And 
his great experiment prevails : Christianity, with Chalmers and 
the kirk session he directs as its instruments, is found to meet 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 445 

every social waut in the populous and difficult parish of St. 
John's. 

It is well known that Chalmers was during his whole life an 
implacable enemy of the English poor-law. We are com- 
pelled to omit a detailed review of his opinions and projects in 
connection with the subject ; but we shall be able, in narrow 
compass, to exhibit the fundamental principle on which he pro- 
ceeded, and the method in which he believed it possible, by 
the aid of vital Christianity to dispense altogether with such 
an institution. 

In his fundamental proposition, That a poor-law endangered 
the feeling of independence, and consequently the morality of 
a people, by converting the petition for an alms into the de- 
mand of a right, he has been agreed with by men of the most 
directly opposed character and opinions, and of the highest 
intellectual powers. The acknowledged master in the schools 
of political economy, David Eicardo, records his emphatic 
opinion to this effect; his shrewd and cool-headed disciple, 
M'Culloch, pronounces the poor-laws " essentially injurious" — 
an opinion, by the way, which renders to us absolutely aston- 
ishing his estimate of the efforts made by Chalmers against 
them. At the distance of a hemisphere, both in thought and 
sentiment, from these men — they, as it were, in polar cold and 
bareness, he in tropic thunder and luxuriance — Mr. Carlyle 
has expressed the same opinion. Yv hether these authors have 
been quite correct or no, we say not ; Dr. Alison adduces a 
fact or two which tell strangely in an opposite direction ; what 
we wish to be noted is, that Chalmers here stood by no means 
alone, that his belief on the point has been treated as an axiom 
by such tliinkers as Eicardo and Carlyle. He declared that 
the only sound and safe method was that of nature ; and he 
pronounced Christianity able to hold up the hands of nature, 



446 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and strengthen her to attain the desired end in her own fair 
and salutary manner. To the argument, that the support of 
the poor, if left to voluntary effort, would fall entirely on the 
benevolent few, he replied, that, if things were properly 
managed, every parish would be able, without strain or incon- 
venience, to support its own poor ; he might have added (per- 
haps, though we do not remember meeting the remark in his 
writings, he has added), that Christianity makes it a privilege 
to stretch out the hand of charity, and that this act of the be- 
nevolent may be intended as a continual rebuke of the world's 
selfishness and protest against it. To the assertion that benev- 
olence could not be depended upon, he replied, that he trusted 
to no fortuitous impulse, but to known principles of human 
nature, the desire to rise, the sympathy of friends, and the un- 
failing bounty of at least a chosen few. The machinery he 
provided is thus described in his own words : — " We divided 
the jDarish into twenty-five parts ; and, having succeeded in ob- 
taining as many deacons, we assigned one part to each — thus 
placing under his management toward fifty families, or at an 
average about four hundred of a gross population. We con- 
structed also a familiar or brief directory, which we put into 
their hands. It laid down the procedure which should be ob- 
served on every application that was made for relief. It was 
our perfect determination that every applicant of ours should 
be at least as well off as he would have been in any other 
parish of Glasgow, had his circumstances there been as well 
known — so that, surrounded though we were by hostile and 
vigilant observers, no case of scandalous allowance, or still 
less of scandalous neglect, was ever made out against us. The 
only distinction between us and our neighbors lay in this — 
that these circumstances were by us most thoroughly scrutin- 
ized, and that with the view of being thoroughly ascertained — ■ 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 447 

and that very generally, in the progress of the investigation, 
we came in sight of opportunities or openings for some one or 
other of those preventive expedients by which any act of 
public charity was made all the less necessary, or very often 
superseded altogether." Here there is really nothing Utopian ; 
rather is there a deliberate and accurate calculation of means, 
measuring of resistance, and mastering of details. With so 
many inspectors, it is difficult to see how destitution could be 
overlooked ; with so many to scrutinize and investigate, it can 
hardly be conceived that any natural channel of relief, by the 
obtaining of work or of assistance from relatives, could be un- 
noticed ; with so many to inform and appeal, it would be no 
easy matter for benevolence to fall asleep. And then, as we 
have said, he proved it ; amid difficulty, obstruction, and with- 
out putting out all his force, he succeeded to the full ; every 
objection and sneer was at last silenced, save one. 

And if all men despaired of the power of Christianity to 
heal and beautify the nation, was it not right, and noble, and 
valiant, that Chalmers should not do so 1 His belief was no 
empty sound, no half-hypocrisy. The religion of Jesus, he 
said, has all its ancient power; for the mechanic dispensings 
of a great lifeless reservoir, walled in by the state, it can give 
the sweet w^atering of nature's gentle rain ; where Law can 
but order relief with her iron tongue, it can set Pity by the 
bed of national weakness, to hallow the ministries of Mercy 
by their own native smile. There was a great fund of hope 
and valor in his breast ; he would not despair of the common- 
wealth ; he would not sit slothfully down in what was at best 
a mere negation of evil, and whose occupancy deferred the 
really good. The worst you can say of him here, is actually 
and without paradox the best which could be said ; for it is 
that which is to be said of all the noblest of the sons of men, 



448 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

and which is the crown of their nobleness ; namely, that they 
looked forward to a brightened future, as that in which it would 
be good, and, as it were, natural, for them to live and expatiate, 
that they seemed to be messengers sent before to herald a be^t- 
ter time, and that the mode in which they delivered their un- 
conscious prophecy was a summons, burning with earnestness 
and hope, to all men to arise and inaugurate the new era now. 
Chalmers could not find his rest in 

"The round 
Of smooth and solemnized complacencies. 
By which, in Christian lands, from age to age, 
Profession mocks performance." 

He dared the original attempt to infuse the spirit of Chris- 
tianity, like vital sap, into the national frame, he aspired to 
shake off from the Christian peoples that mournful sleep — of 
custom, of routme, of worldliness — which has ever, with grad- 
ual, but hitherto irresistible influence, closed the national eye, 
that seemed erewhile to be opened wide and kindled with em- 
pyreal fire. This is the heroic aspect of his life ; his endless 
battle against mere respectability and commonplace; his 
valiant and life-long endeavor to set Christianity on the throne 
and in the heart of the nation. He is the modern Christian ; 
shutting his eye to nothing, acquainted with every cotemporary 
agency, but declaring that Christianity is still able to marshal 
every force, and meet every requirement in social existence. 
And we need not say that he here pointed the way in all 
reform which can be regarded with perfect satisfaction and 
unfaltering hope; if he failed, we must just raise the same 
banner, and, with somewhat of his ardor, still calmly and 
dauntlessly exclaim. Excelsior : the life of Chalmers was a 
proclamation of the world's last hope. 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 449 

And in at least the special forms in which he himself had 
striven to reanimate the nation with Christian life, he did fail. 
For long years he traveled, and wrote, and argued for church 
extension ; year after year, he looked to every quarter of the 
heavens, if perchance a gleam of hope against pauperism might 
cheer his eye. But the day of his life drew on to a close, and 
the work was yet to do. Then he withdrew into his closet, and 
in silent heaviness of heart penned the following words ; we 
find them in Dr. Hanna's last volume : — 

'^Sabbath, December 12, 1841. — The passage respecting 
Babel should not be without an humble and wholesome eifect 
upon my spirit. I have been set on the erection of my Babel 
— on the establishment of at least two great objects, which, 
however right in themselves, become the mere objects of a fond 
and proud imagination, in as far as they are not prosecuted with 
a feeling of dependence upon God, and a supreme desire after 
his glory. These two objects are, the deliverance of our em- 
pire from pauperism, and the establishment of an adequate 
machinery for the Christian and general instruction of onr 
whole population. I am sure that, in the advancement of 
these, I have not taken God enough along with me, and trusted 
more to my own arguments and combinations among my fel- 
lows, than to prayers. There has been no confounding of 
tongues to prevent a common understanding, so indispensable 
to that co-operation, without which there can be no success, 
but Avithout this miracle my views have been marvelously im- 
peded by a diversity of opinions, as great as if it had been 
brought on by a diversity of language. The barriers in the 
way of access to other men's minds have been as obstinate and 
unyielding as if I had spoken to them in foreign speech ; and, 
though I can not resign my convictions, I must now — and 
surely it is good to be so taught — I must now, under the ex- 



450 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

perimental sense of my own helplessness, acknowledge, with 
all humility, yet with hope, in the efficacy of a blessing from 
on high still in reserve for the day of God's own appointed 
time, that except ' the Lord build the house, the builders build 
in vain.' " 

The spectacle of Chalmers, as he pens these lines, is assuredly 
the most sublime afforded by his life. The very health and 
tenderness of childhood are in the heart of the old warrior ; 
he brings his sword, and lays it down at eventide, willing, even 
with tears, to acknowledge that it is because of the weakness 
of his arm, and the faithlessness of his heart, that the enemy 
has not been vanquished. The light in the face of Arnold, too, 
we found to shine more brightly as he was about to enter the 
valley of death. 

Of the causes of this ultimate failure, which, however, might 
be a failure more in appearance than reality, it is unnecessary 
to say much. 

If there was any great supplement to be made to the general 
system of Chalmers's thought and opinion, it was an adequate 
sense, on the one hand, of the difficulty of his enterprise, and, 
on the other, of the chief and indispensable means by which it 
could be accomplished : on the one hand of the impotence of 
machinery, and on the other of the extreme rarity and ines- 
timable worth of true and mighty men. It is an invisible 
force that is wanted rather than wheel-work ; the latter will be 
provided with comparative ease ; the most elaborate machinery, 
without this living force, may hang vacant in the winds, like a 
rattling skeleton where once was the throb of life and the flush 
of health. The Church-state of Arnold — king and senators 
teaching wisdom and doing the bidding of God, the powers of 
evil aghast at the new vision of Christian unity and love — the 
manageable parishes, and country studded with churches, of 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 4/51 

Chalmers : — alas ! we must cast a questioning, or at least a 
warning glance toward all such schemes. The universal 
Church, that looks so fair in the distance, of which all the for- 
merly separate churches are but pillars, all within whose walls 
are true Christians, all without whose walls are Pagans ; can 
we look long at the imposing structure without seeing, as if 
emerging from beneath its crumbling battlements, a great 
whited sepulcher, uniform — as death 1 A country filled with 
clergymen, a church in every street, a parish in every valley : — 
must we not here also proclaim that danger impends ? In our 
cross-grained world, every good thing has a counterfeit which 
is doubly evil : self-respect, recognized as indispensable to 
completeness of character, is aped by impudence and conceit ; 
politeness, one of nature's fairest and costliest flowers, which 
can grow only in a rich and kindly soil, is mimicked by eti- 
quette, a very gum-flower ; sanctity, the attribute of the sons 
of the morning, may, by human eyes, be confounded with 
sanctimoniousness spurned of devils. And it is a well-known 
law, that the nobler the thing is, the baser is its counterfeit. 
A hypocritic smile, a traitorous kiss, are far worse than a scowl 
of honest hate or a stab of open vengeance. If, then, as we 
assuredly believe, a godly minister is an angel of light, a god- 
less pastor is a very angel of darkness. Between the real 
Christian pastor, whose worth can not be summed, and the in- 
dolent, greedy, black-coated lounger, who burdens with his '^^ 
maintenance, and blights by his example, who is a continual 
living profanation of what is holiest, there is but an invisible 
difference. Get your men, and all is got. A Brainerd finds 
himself a congregation among North American Indians, a 
Schwartz among the swamps and fevers of the Carnatic, but 
churches will not by any natural necessity attract ministers. 
This immovable fact we must always take along with us. 



452 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Chalmers, no doubt, knew it, and it will ultimately, as seems 
probable, be found that it was by acting on hidividual men 
over the country that his influence was most powerful : but he 
did not grasp it in all its mighty import, and make it con- 
sciously and avowedly the basis of his operations : one man 
alone has proclaimed this doctrine in all the emphasis which is 
its due — Thomas Carlyle. Ah ! what a prospect might we 
have had now, had Carlyle and Chalmers toiled side by side in 
the Church of Scotland. Let us not, however, deem that we 
shall be sinless, if we neglect the truth to which the former has 
called our attention. 

After four years' incumbency in the parish of St. John's, 
Chalmers removed, in November, 1823, to St. Andrews, to fill 
the chair of Moral Philosophy in the university there. His 
main reason for quitting Glasgow deserves notice. His experi- 
ment in the parish of St. John's silenced, as we said, all ob- 
jections but one. This one was the determined assertion that 
the whole success was due to the eloquence and energy, in 
one word, to the individual character of Chalmers. It is fine 
to see how this galls him. He exclaims against the " nauseous 
eulogies" which would turn into an empty compliment to him 
the demonstration of the power of Christianity. But it is vain 
to argue : the one reply they make to every appeal is, St. 
John's parish is worked by Chalmers. What can be done? 
The following are his own words : — " There was obviously no 
method by which to disabuse them of this strange impression, 
but by turning my back on the whole concern ; and thus test- 
ing the inherent soundness and efficacy of the system, by leav- 
ing it in other hands." And so he goes to St. Andrews ; let 
the cause prosper whatever may become of him ! Like him- 
self again. 

In 1828, he is inaugurated as Professor of Divinity in the 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 463 

University of Edinburgh, an office he continues to fill until 
within a few years of his death. Over his students he exer- 
cises the same powerful and benign influence which he has 
shed an all who have come within his sphere. His prelec- 
tions tend to produce godly and ardent pastors, rather than 
nice controversialists ; he is, though not so named, the greatest 
among professors of Pastoral Theology; his spirit goes over 
Scotland incarnated in young, vigorous, aggressive Christian 
ministers. 

We now approach that epoch in the life of Chalmers, during 
which, for the last time, he w^as to act a great and prominent 
part before the eyes of men. Within the circle of his sympa- 
thies and the ken of his powers, h4 had embraced all the lead- r- — 
ing interests of the empire ; with a gigantic and hallowed en- 
ergy, he had striven to reanimate them, by an inspiration of 
divine fire. And with a certain hopefulness, which, though 
damped by opposition, could not altogether die, he had ever 
looked to the provisions and mechanism of that Scottish Church 
which he loved with the double affection of patriotism and 
pride. Whether it came of the substantial and practical na- 
ture of his intellect, or whether it arose from his deep loyalty 
and conservative tendencies, we shall not say, but the fact is 
certain, that he was a decided and inflexible advocate of re- 
ligious establishments. But, with the views of a statesman, 
he was also a divine. Never for a moment did he conceive 
the unchristian idea that it was State support which gave 
existence to a Church. The doctrine of the distinct existence 
of the Church of Christ he grasped with all the firmness of his 
strong powers, and discerned with all their clearness : wliat- 
ever his faith in the efficacy of Christianity, it was in a Chris- 
tianity not the bondslave of man but the messenger of God. 

It is, of course, unnecessary for us either to detail the va 



454 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

rious stages of the controversy which preceded the celebrated 
Disruption of 1843 in the Scottish National Church, or to de- 
fine, with precision and in detail, the argumentative positions 
taken by the respective parties. It were, however, unpardon- 
able, altogether to shun the question. Chalmers acted a part 
therein too prominent to render this permissible ; while the 
movement itself bears closely on one of the main general 
objects of our little work, the ascertainment of the actual 
power and practical availability of what names itself Christian 
principle in our age. We shall endeavor to eliminate, from 
the outline we purpose giving of the question at issue, all 
merely local reference and detail, seeking some truth of uni- 
versal and important application. We shall avoid, also, almost 
entirely, the discussion of the exegetical arguments on either 
side : not that the testimony of Scripture is not final and absolute 
on the point, but that the perfect reasonableness of what we 
deem the truth in the matter will, if well established, render the 
simple deliverance of Scripture at once intelligible, express, 
and beyond reach of cavil. If we in any measure succceed 
in our object, we shall aim blows at certain of the most bane- 
ful, and, we fear, widespread errors which endanger religion 
in our day. 

To speak in a way perhaps somewhat pedantic, but which 
is the only way we can see to express concisely our meaning, 
we have to discover, as the essential points of the matter before 
us, the idea of a State, the idea of a Church, and the relation 
between the two ; wherein each of these — the state, the church, 
and the relation — essentially consists. 

We shall encumber ourselves with no preliminary discus- 
sion of the question. What is the final end at once of State 
and Church '? We lay it down as the fundamental axiom of 
the whole discussion, that the glory of God is the end and in- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 455 

tent of each. We hold that the arguments adducible by 
reason to prove that the end of individual existence is God's 
glory, can be brought, perhaps without exception, to prove 
the same fact in the case of governments. But let no rash 
conclusions be drawn from this all-important declaration. 
Every man works for God's glory when he performs the pe- 
culiar task assigned him by God ; it may be implied in his 
thorough discharge of this task, that he abstain from all other 
efforts and functions, however plausibly he may be invited 
thereto : and the remark applies equally to all beneath the 
• government of God. 

This axiom laid down, we have to take but one step, v/hen 
the whole matter clears up before us. Man's nature, indi- 
vidual and social, is twofold, spiritual and physical. That he 
has a physical nature, that he is a denizen of earth, and has to 
work that he may live, we need adduce no argument to show. 
That his nature, also is spiritual, that, as a spirit, he is con- 
nected with a system of things not terrestrial but celestial, 
not temporal but eternal, is attested by reason. Here, too, 
nothing more is strictly necessary, than a simple statement of 
the fact. 

Now we hold it a definition of Church and State perfectly 
adequate for our purposes, which declares the former to be a 
union among men, considered as spiritual beings, and for 
spiritual ends, and the latter a union for objects of a strictly 
terrestrial nature. Let it be remarked here, first, that we 
look at both Church and State with the eye of reason ; and, 
second, that we thus define a State not in its relation to other 
States, but with reference to its own members. 

Has God appointed to the church and state, thus defined, 
respective duties 1 We think He has ; and shall endeavor 
briefly to discriminate their functions. 



456 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

The function of a State, viewed in the relation indicated 
above, is confined to terrestrial matters. A government is, as 
it were, God's commissioner to see that the national farm be 
thoroughly tilled. If this can be shown to be work sufficient 
and separable, our point will be half proved. The State's ob- 
ject is to render itself safe from without, and, to express all 
in one word, prosperous within. We shall not say that this 
exhausts its duty in relation to other States ; we speak of its 
duties toward itself. And for the attainment of this object, 
what is necessary ? It is needful, in one word, that the national 
virtues flourish. For safety, it is requisite that the people be 
courageous, sober, observant of an oath ; for prosperity, it is 
necessary that they be industrious, so that the nation collect- 
ively may derive the greatest possible benefit from its soil, 
climate, and mineral wealth, and that they be commercially 
upright, so that the rights of all may be balanced, and the 
general welfare subserved. A government prevents internally 
every form of aggression by man on man ; this last is the pre- 
cise, scientific definition oi crime in a nation. It is a fact that 
there is a morality whose exclusive theater is earth ; there is 
an integrity between man and man which supports commerce, 
a national steadfastness and industry which avert revolution, 
a loyalty, a patriotism, a valor, which girdle the state as 
with bayonets. And surely these — and we have nowise ex- 
hausted the list — constitute work sufficient for any body cor- 
porate. 

There are men, and in our day they are numerous, we fear, 
beyond precedent, who consider such achievements as we have 
glanced at above, and the general morality we have indicated, 
to be all which can concern men and nations. Atheistic 
morals are by nature and necessity confined to such. A man 
might remain immaculate, on the system of D'Holbach, or 



THOMAS CHALMERI 



457 



Godwin, or Comte, though he had never believed in or heard 
of a God. In all such systems, man's whole duties are his 
duties to man. 

But, if we believe that man is even now the denizen of a 
higher world than that of sense, if we attribute reality to a 
spiritual province of things, a morality and a government dif- 
ferent from these are seen, in natural and inevitable sequence, 
to emerge. This is celestial morality : and the body corpo- 
rate which bears the same relation to it that secular govern- 
ment bears to secular morality, is the Church. All that a 
brother man is empowered to demand of another is, that he 
give him free and fair play for all his faculties, that he harm 
him not ; God may demand of a man that he be holy in 
thought, heart, and action ; terrestrial morality may be called 
harmlessness ; celestial, holiness. To profane the name of 
God may imply no harm to a fellow-man, but it may be an 
infraction of man's duty to God. The devotion of a certain 
time to the worship of God, may or may not be of direct and 
obvious advantage to the community, but it may be required 
by God. In short, there may be a surveillance of man as a 
denizen of the spiritual world, as well as a surveillance of him 
as a denizen of earth. And so, by a sequence as strict as in 
the case of the State, a separate set of functions arise for the 
Church. 

If, now, we have followed correctly, though for a short way, 
the light of reason, it seems to have led us to the greater 
light of revelation. This teaches us that man at first was not 
a fettered bondslave, that he had not to purchase existence by 
toil, that he was not cursed with labor ; that sin deprived him 
of his spiritual birth-right, condemned him to work that body 
and soul might remain together, and set Death over him as a 
ruthless taskmaster, to keep him in the furrow. But it teaches 

20 



458 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

US, also, tliat those higher regions, toward which reason wist- 
fully but weakly looks, are real ; that we are spirits still : that 
God is yet our King ; that immortality and spiritual joys may 
again be ours ; and that we even now exist in a system of re- 
lations which bind us to the spirit-world. Secular government 
has been rendered necessary by the fall ; the Church exists by 
virtue of the promise. Both of them, viewed from the stand- 
point of eternity, and regarded as separate systems of mechan- 
ism, are expedients, and both temporary. The state must 
cease to exist when men are purely spiritual, and mutual in- 
jury is impossible ; it will cease, as we said long since, when 
justice and love shall have become one. The Church, too, 
viewed as a visible organization, will conduct men but a cer- 
tain way ; it will vanish at the gates of heaven ; it finds man 
in a condition of lapse and distemper, it aims to restore him 
to a paradaisal state ; this done, it will pass away, enveloped 
in a cloud of glory. For the present, the duties of State and 
Church are discriminated ; neither is delivered from direct re- 
sponsibility to God ; but the Church respects the first table of 
the law, the State the second. 

A detailed proof from Scripture that the State has duties of 
its own, is necessary ; and, touching the distinctive powers of 
the Church, we have declared our determination to abstain 
from a detailed proof and definition of these from Holy Writ. 
The general course, however, and nature of the evidence in the 
latter case may be easily and at a glance comprehended. 
Either, with Whately, we might determine the powers which 
pertain of necessity to every corporation, and, showing that 
the Church is, by its scriptural definition, of that nature, infer 
that these powers belong to it. Or, we might cite the express 
declarations of our Lord, by which He committed the power 
of discipline, the power, under Him, of opening and shutting 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 459 

the kingdom of heaven, to His Church; declarations with 
which, whatever they mean, it can not even be maintained that 
any terrestrial power can interfere, and whose meaning seems 
as clear and explicit as words can make it. And we might 
point, further, to the indubitable practice of the early Church ; 
we might instance, as absolutely sufficient and conclusive, the 
case of the Church of Corinth. The authority of Paul as a 
preacher of Christianity will not be questioned by any to 
whom we now speak ; the fact that he points out the duty of 
expelling a certain member from the Church, is not within the 
reach of cavil ; and the whole nature and compass of the disci- 
pline of a Christian Church are unfolded in his general direc- 
tions on the subject. In a word, it might be shown, by clear 
and conclusive arguing, that the early Christian Church exer- 
cised powers within itself according to a law given it by in- 
spiration. 

We shall not speak of the delinquencies which may be vis- 
ited with discipline by a church. In general terms, it exer- 
cises all the powers belonging to a corporation as such. But 
of the nature of the penalty to be inflicted it is well to remark, 
that it must, of necessity, be purely spiritual. The offense 
committed is one against God ; the punishment with which it 
is to be visited can have reference solely to Him. A physical 
punishment is, by the nature of the case, out of the question. 
If the member expelled or excommunicated laughs at the 
decree, it is, as respects visible suffering inflicted by men, null 
and void. It is true, indeed, that if the inhabitants of the 
country in w^hich the decree takes effect are all Christians, and 
consequently attach weight to the displeasure of the Church, 
considerable discomfort may result from discountenance by 
his brethren. But this, be it distinctly noted, is a remark 
which applies to the working of every possible corporation. 



460 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

Having now granted that the provinces of Church and State 
are absolutely severed, and having laid it down that the former, 
in its requirements and penalties, must have exclusive refer- 
ence, directly or indirectly, to celestial morality, it may seem 
difficult to find any mode in which they can legitimately and 
beneficially be allied. To us, on the other hand, this is now a 
simple matter. The State is bound to entertain the question, 
regarding every agency which may present itself, Does it 
further the views entertained, the objects aimed at, by the 
State 1 We desire special attention here : what we deem the 
truth lies close to deadly error. It is one thing to ask. Will 
the Church, used as a mechanism by the State, promote State 
objects'? and another to ask the absolutely distinct question. 
Will the Church, acting solely for its own ends and by its own 
laws, promote that morality which the State requires, and is 
appointed by God to require ? The first is a question the 
Church of Christ dare not even listen to ; the second is that 
which the State is bound to ask, and to which the Church may, 
we think, give a decisive answer, and one on which an alliance 
between Church and State may be reared. 

We venture to say that we are here at the very spring and 
original fountain of all the errors, theoretic and practical, 
which have encumbered this subject : by a distinct recollec- 
tion and recognition of the separate provinces of celestial and 
terrestrial morality, and of the respective functions of Church 
and State, such errors had been obviated. The Church, in 
virtue of its origin, by charter of its King, in the discharge 
of those duties which alone render it necessary and existent 
in the sum of things, concerns itself with celestial morality ; 
with a morality which lies beyond the pale of human law, 
whose rejection may infringe no right of man with man, which 
is between man and his God. Reason, in its highest and pur- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 461 

est momontSj declares the province and functions of the Church 
to be real ; the Word of God assigns it certain duties, and 
appoints for it a certain government. The only offer it can 
or dare listen to from the State, is one which will guarantee 
its action as a Church. Turning to the State, on the other 
hand, we find it answerable to God for the maintenance of the 
common weal ; and it is but another form of expressing this, 
to say, that it is answerable for the promotion of those virtues 
on which the safety and prosperity of a commonwealth de- 
pend. When a Church comes before it, then, it must simply 
inquire whether it, acting in the only way in which a Church 
can act, will promote public morality ; in other words, whether 
the promotion of celestial morality will further that other mo- 
rality by which a State subsists. 

And what answer is it right for a State to render to this 
question ? We think that State and Church can each satisfy 
the other here, so as to form an alliance not merely of harm- 
less, but of eminently beneficent nature. State and Church 
hold their powers from the same Hand ; God has appointed 
them to perform different functions, but they are united by 
the bond of a common service. Their powers are co-ordinate, 
but they mutually assist and establish each other. The one 
grand argument to prove that the State ought to be in kindly 
alliance with the Church, ought to countenance, and to its ability 
support it, is this : That reason, history, and Scripture, blend 
their testimonies to show that religion is the only safeguard 
of a nation^ that love to one's neighbor can never nationally 
subsist save as dependent upon love to one's God. We have 
in a former part of this volume adduced sufficient proof of 
that. 

Observe how close truth here lies to error. The Church, 
forgetting that its province is essentially and exclusively spir- 



462 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

itual, that its penalties can be terrible in the esteem of a man, 
only in so far as he is a Christian and believes in its power 
with God (with the qualification we formerly mentioned), over- 
steps its bound, and touches a man's terrestrial possessions ; 
fines, tortures, slays him. This is an anomaly in nature ; no 
Church can have power to touch a hair of a man's head, or an 
ear of his corn. Of this error we need not speak ; it has taken 
form in a system which has not failed to illustrate its baneful 
effects, the system of Popery. 

But in our day it is an error of a very different order which 
prevails. It is the error of regarding the Church as an organ- 
ization to be looked at as primarily and directly subservient 
to the interests of State morality. This ignores celestial mo- 
rality, and, by turning it into a system of police, positively 
annihilates the Church. Now, we venture to say, that with a 
great body among our respectable, cultivated classes, no other 
idea of a Church is to be found than this, that it is a piece of 
State mechanism, to be worked by the State for its own pur- 
poses. Such a Church js easily conceivable. It is one Avhich 
simply relinquishes its native functions as connected with ce- 
lestial morality. A secular government desires that men be 
upright, and sober, and brave ; but it directly subserves no 
end of state that men believe in an everlasting reward and a 
heavenly King : yet, if the Church has a distinct existence, 
these must be of caj)ital importance for it. A Church is re- 
quired to proclaim from her pulpits a morality immaculately 
pure ; government may find, or imagine it finds, such morality 
reflect in no flattering manner on its own measures : nay, it 
may desire the advocacy of its measures, directly or indi- 
rectly, from the pulpit ; and so the process may go on extend- 
ing and deepening, till the very essence and origin of a Church 
are forgotten ! And yet, as we say, do not ideas, tending di- 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 463 

recti} to this result, pervade society in our day ? Is it not a 
common notion, however unconsciously held, among the mem- 
bers of our National Churches, that these are Churches in 
virtue of their connection with the State ? Is it not a fact that 
many excellent persons in our Churches, in the Church of Eng- 
land for instance, would apply the term of schism to a sepa- 
ration from the State ? As if the State made the establishment 
of England a Church, as if it could exercise no function apart 
from the State, as if it would be equivalent to its extinction 
as a Church, to throw it again into the condition in which that 
of Corinth was when it received its doctrine from the mouth 
of Paul! Among the Dissenters, on the other hand, and in 
what may be called a negative form, the same idea has exten- 
sive prevalence. It seemed perfectly absurd to Foster to 
hear it asserted, as the Scotch Non-intrusion party astonished 
him by asserting, that a state might endow, but could never 
regulate a Church. As if, forsooth, the question of endowment 
or non-endowment were a vital, or even an important one in 
the matter ! The grand question is. Whether the State is 
bound to sanction, countenance, and promote the Church ; set- 
tle this affirmatively, and you have settled the question of an 
establishment ; whether the form of support which consists in 
handing it a certain portion of money is sound and legitimate 
or not, is a different question altogether, and of very subordi- 
nate importanpe. To imagine that the acceptance of a certain 
form of support implied an abnegation of distinctive and 
essential power and existence, was surely an egregious error, 
and one which, fallen into by such an intellect as Foster's, 
indicated wide oblivion to the real nature and functions of a 
Church. 

We can not sufficiently denounce this great heresy. A 
Church such as we have seen men imagine for themselves 



464 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

would not necessarily turn men to God ; it would merely pre- 
serve them in a state of respectability and loyalty. This is 
against the very idea of a Christian Church ;^ if it becomes 
universal, religion, strictly speaking, is as good as dead in our 
Churches. The sister establishments may, doubtless, go on 
for a time ; and it may even be deemed desirable by many 
without their pale, that they should still continue to subsist. 
Evils there are which they may certainly obstruct. But if 
they become simply a part of the government mechanism for 
the quiet guidance of the nation ; if they are to be primarily 
and undeniably hills of dead earth heaped on the Enceladus 
of modern revolutionism ; if their strength is to be made up 
of the many who, having no religion of their own, take that 
which comes to hand with a government sanction ; if their 
members are to be not Christians, but " respectable persons ;" 
if their piety is to be not the reverent upturning of the finite 
eye to the Infinite God, but a fluctuating accommodation tc 
the religious fashions of the day — that goes once to church, 
or twice, as is the mode, that subscribes to missions, and gets 
up sales for charitable purposes, or does not, as is the mode, 
that has family prayers or not, as is the mode — then they 
may indeed remain for a time, and even do their work, and 
get their reward, but the first blast of millennial Christianity 
will sweep them utterly away. The Tyrians chained Apollo 
to the statue of Dagon, but Alexander laid their towers in the 
dust all the same ! Revolution is fearful ; the unchained 
masses, foaming, maddened in atheistic frenzy, are fearful ; but 
Christianity chained in the temple of Mammon is the most 
fearful of all. 

We can have no hesitation in declaring, that the great prin- 
ciples we have sketched, or rather the one principle of the 
separate existence and co-ordinate Divine origin of the Church, 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 465 

in perfect independence of the State, constituted the vital ele- 
ment in the long struggle which issued in the rending asunder 
of the Church of Scotland. To one out of the din of conflict, 
who contemplates the matter in the calm stillness of distance, 
the whole becomes absolutely plain. We say not that there 
were no such obscuring or confounding influences around those 
who were parties in the debate, as to render it conceivable, 
and consistent with honesty, that they should oppose that view 
of the case taken by the party of Chalmers ; and plain as it 
seems to us, that the question was one touching expressly 
those principles we have laid down, there is perhaps no person 
now in Scotland who would refuse assent in terms to what we 
have said. Yet, putting the argument of the party which op- 
posed the majority in the most favorable light possible, what 
does it amount to? Suppose. that the Church, in admitting 
the ministers of Chapels of Ease to a fall and equal share in 
every ministerial function, did overstep the letter of its legal 
powers, and that the whole actings of government toward it 
during the struggle were influenced by this consideration, how 
does it affect the question ? It seems to us merely to clear it 
up, and to bring it within a narrow compass. If a Church 
possess corporate freedom, we shall agree that it has those 
powers which belong by nature to a corporation. These we 
may as well take from Whateley ; no one will say he fixes 
the standard too high. Corporate freedom implies that the 
body in question has officers, rules, a power of discipline, and 
an authority to admit or exclude members. Now, when Chal- 
mers in London declared the Church of Scotland free, it either 
was so in the above sense, or it was not. If it was, then it 
is but a statement of an obvious fact, that it was competent 
to it to admit the chapel ministers to its full membership. 
If it was not free, if Chalmers was mistaken, if, from any 
20* 



466 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

cause whatsoever, or in any circumstances, this right was 
called in question, it was necessary, at whatever expense, that 
it should be vindicated. It will be said that this act of admis- 
sion on the part of the Church aifected, indirectly but unques- 
tionably, the civil rights of certain individuals. Be it so ; we 
have made full provision for the objection ; we simply say, 
that, if a time had come when civil rights, when endowment, 
in one form or another, interfered with the very life of the 
Church, the time had also come when it behooved that Church 
to declare, that its perfect severance from all endowment was, 
strictly speaking, of infinitely less moment than that there should 
remain the faintest doubt of its freedom. It is, besides, a 
well kno\^Ti fact that the Church, ere laying its endowments 
at the foot of the State, expressed its willingness to surrender 
all control over the money paid to those inducted into its par- 
ishes. That fatal error, however, which we have noted, pre- 
vailed widely. Men deemed it something anomalous and un- 
heard of, that a Church should receive money from a State, 
and yet possess a jurisdiction absolutely distinct from that of 
the secular government. It must be added, that the catastro- 
phe was heightened and induced by a too great oblivion in the 
public mind to the nature and extent of Christian discipline, 
and a thick and stupid ignorance of the very ideas and neces- 
sities of corporate existence. 

Chalmers, looking at the whole question with the eye at 
once of a statesman and divine, saw into its essence, and took 
his position accordingly. With no elaborate searching or 
arguing, his piercing eye at once flashed through all sophistry, 
to the truth that the life of the Church was in danger. It was 
with a certain astonishment and sorrow that he fought his last 
battle. If ever there beat a loyal heart, it was in his bosom. 
Since the day when he wept in the garden at Blenheim, since 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 467 

the dav he had enlisted in the volunteers, chaplain and lieu- 
tenant, since the day he had invoked death to smite him ere 
his country fell, he had ever loved kingship, and national stead- 
fastness, and the dignity of an ancestral Church. He knew 
that the Church of his fathers was throbbing with spiritual life, 
as she had not done for two centuries ; he saw her mission- 
aries going to the ends of the earth ; he saw her blooming 
into new fruitfulness at home, and casting her mantle over all 
the population. It was with dismay and amazement that he 
witnessed the infatuation of the government; that he listened 
to the unspeakable nonsense uttered about clerical oppression, 
popery, liberty of the subject, etc. ; that he saw Conservatism 
in Scotland trying to get the tough old Presbyterian Samson, 
his hair grown after two centuries of weakness, to be a mere 
maker of sport for it. As he said of his parting from his 
dear sequestered Kilmany, there was tearing of the heart- 
strings there ! 

Yet we shall also say that there was something fine in the 
spectacle of Chalmers contending at the head of the Church of 
Scotland, for the fundamental doctrine that the Church of Christ 
owes its existence to no fiat of the State, to no dole of public 
money, but to the word of its Master, and to that alone. That 
it was the duty of the State to support the Church, he held to 
be irrefragable ; but to make the Church, not a fire which it 
fed with fuel, but a machine which it regulated and worked, 
he saw to be a fundamental heresy. With a mind perfectly 
settled on the question, and with an intrepidity which his known 
and enthusiastic respect for constituted authorities rendered 
the more conspicuous and the more noble, he calmly yet un- 
flinchingly contended. His hair was growing white, and a 
deeper stillness was settling in his eye, though the old liquid 
fii'e would at times glare out ; his fane had spread over the 



468 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

old world and the new; he had been fla.'tered by the highest 
aristocracy of the land : yet he was still the same devout hum- 
ble Christian that he had become when first the light of God 
opened upon him at Kilmany, he was still the same earnest 
worker as w^hen he set Glasgow into a ferment of Christian 
Philanthropy, he was still the same tender-hearted personal 
friend who wept over the grave of Thomas Saiith. His words, 
his writings, and, most of all, his example, had struck new vi- 
tality through all the borders of Christian Scotland ; and now, 
as the glories of eventide were beginning to encircle him, he 
saw around him an army of young ardent spirits, who, in 
their pulpits, preached Christ and Him crucified, and, in the 
assemblies of their Church, defended her rights with an ability 
and a persistency which astonished every party. The sun 
looks proudest in the evening, and the cause of his grandeur 
is, that, ere he himself sinks to rest, a thousand clouds, which 
his light brightens into radiance and beauty, encircle and seem 
to escort him : so, when a great man draws to his rest, a 
thousand younger men, whose fire has been kindled by him, 
reflect his light and testify his power. 

In the beginning of the summer of 1843, Thomas Chalmers 
and in all nearly five hundred ministers of the Church of Scot- 
land severed the connection which bound them to the State, 
relinquished every claim on its immunities, and re-constituted 
the Church in a state of freedom. Not abjuring the principle 
of an establishment, but protesting that no government sanc- 
tion could stand in the room of that Divine authority which 
gave life to a Church, they parted from a government which 
seemed ignorant of its nature, and claimed an authority 
paramount to that of its charter written by the finger of God. 
By its position, the Church is ready, at any moment, to re- 
unite with the State ; but this can not be, until it is acknowl- 



THOMAS CHALMERS 469 

edged by the highest authority in these realms, that, without 
consideration of circumstances or results, it is corporate] y 
free, within itself supreme. Till then, it must remain dis- 
established. 

The act of Chalmers and his followers requires no trumpet- 
ing, and none shall be attempted here. But it is a mere argu- 
mentative assertion, removed altogether from enthusiasm or 
exaggeration, that the Scottish Disruption, whatever minor 
opinions may be held regarding it, did evince that Christianity 
has a real and a powerful hold upon both the pastors and the 
people of Scotland in our day. We care not how little be 
made of this; we know too well that Scotland has little to 
boast of, and great cause for repentance ; but we can not de- 
fraud ourselves of the hope and assurance that there is ground 
to stand upon, that there is a fire in the nation's heart which 
may be fanned into a beneficent light and heat. In an age of 
respectability and commonplace, in an age when the decorous, 
the established, the aristocratic, is still so revered and clung 
to by at least our middle classes, a large body of men, well 
advanced in life, and many of them tottering under gray hairs, 
deliberately stepped from under the smile of power, deliber- 
ately risked their continuance as a Church on the Christianity 
of the people and the blessing of God. Such events do not 
occur in the history of dead religions ; «uch phenomena can 
not appear where religion is a doubt. 

The whole spectacle of the Disruption, viewed in the re- 
lation borne to it by government, is anomalous and amazing. 
Disencumbered of all incidental and extraneous entanglements 
arising from the civil rights of individuals, the power claimed 
by the Church of Scotland, ere demitting its endowment, was 
precisely that which is exercised by every Dissenting body iu 
the kingdom, and which it at once began to exercise on part- 



4Y0 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

ing from the State. This circumstance alone appears sufficient 
to Isaac Taylor to stamp the conduct of the State as impolitic ; 
and, though we should take far higher grounds than he in dis- 
cussing the general question, we deem the fact an absolute evi- 
dence that there was no ruling British statesman of the day 
capable of taking a strong original look at the matter. The 
sovereign power of Britain tore asunder a body of known loy- 
alty, which sat enthroned in the affection of the mass of the 
people of Scotland, and whose influence could not but be pro- 
nounced, on the whole, promotive of public morality, for one 
of two causes : either because it would not permit the Church 
to do vv'hat every Dissenting body does, and what this body 
could not when disestablished be prevented from doing ; or 
because there was not ability and decision in its compass suf^ 
ficient to disentangle and make short work with a few beggarly 
questions touching money matters. From this dilemma there 
is no escape. Into one of two errors or both, it seemed im- 
possible for British statesmen to avoid falling : into that of 
fancying that the Church claimed a Popish power, that it was 
going to erect a spiritual despotism ; to which, remembering 
that we live in the nineteenth century, and that all Protestant 
bodies are thus spiritual despotisms, we decline replying, as 
sheer and infantile foolery : or into that of affirming the Church 
to be a mere state police, paid, and, by natural consequence, 
superintended, by government ; which we have already abund- 
antly shown to be an ignorance of the very conditions of the 
question, a negation of the existence of a Church. 

Chalmers was now becoming an old man. On passing his 
sixtieth year, he entered on what he called the Sabbath of his 
life, six working decades past. It was a beautiful thought, and 
showed how his great soul yearned, like all the noble, for re- 
pose. Over the last years of his life there rests a still and 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 47l 

pensive beauty, a soft radiance of Sabbatic calm ; not unshaded 
by sadness, not all unbroken by agitation, they are wrapped 
in peace and harmony by that effect which poet-painters ever 
love, the dawning, in the background, of infinite light. It was 
hard, with now aged limb, to leave that establishment, from 
whose battlements, in the morn, and noontide, and hale after- 
noon of his years, he had looked with a glance of pride and 
satisfaction, such as lit the minstrel king's, when he looked 
from the towers of Zion. It was, indeed, a high consolation 
that in Scotland there was still enough of " celestial fire" to or- 
ganize and animate a free Church : but his faith in voluntary- 
ism was not even yet absolute ; and the one grand idea of his 
life, the reaping of the great out-field, the diffusion of Chris- 
tianity over all the land, seemed no longer realizable. That 
sadness which we have seen to be characteristic of the close 
of the most memorable and precious lives, descended per- 
ceptibly, in the evening of his days, on the manly brow of 
Chalmers. 

The general aspect of these years is of deep interest and in- 
struction, and can not but reward a few final glances. 

While the member of an established Church, his large heart 
had opened its gates to every thing noble in dissent, to receive 
and love it ; and now, when he was himself member of a 
disestablished body, his nature flung aside those constraining 
and cramping cords of sectarianism, which seem inevitably to 
twine themselves, however insensibly, around men of particular 
parties and denominations. It was with a glow of generous 
and enthusiastic joy that he hailed the Evangelical Alliance ; 
as one in a fleet on a stormy sea, when morning was drawing 
on, might hail the streaks of that sun which was to extinguish 
the lamp in each separate vessel. And with a fearless and 
truly Christian cosmopolitanism, he threw out his sympathies 



472 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 



in other directions. He earnestly accepted a contribution 
toward the cause of humanity, whencesoever it came. He 
could stand immovable in his own belief: and yet hear words 
of instruction or monition from others whose opinions were 
widely apart from his : he could rest in his belief that Chris- 
tianity, that the preaching of Christ crucified, could alone re- 
generate the world ; and yet he could hear, in the words of 
Mr. Carlyle, the voice of God to the Churches, proclaiming 
that their indifference and their dormancy had left a breach to 
the enemy. 

What a stirring gleam of Christian valor, too, in that deter- 
mination, old as he was, to master German philosophy ! He 
is not the man to be afraid; he will enter this untrodden 
region ; if any new seed, or fruit, or flower of truth has been 
found, he must know and possess it ; if any new form of error 
has appeared, he must go, like a brave and faithful son, to set 
it, yet another trophy, on Truth's immortal brow ! 

His intellect was now calm, comprehensive, sage ; his heart 
was fresh as w^ith the dew of youth. He again read Shakes- 
peare, Milton, and Gibbon. His re-perusal of the former fur- 
nishes a beautiful and characteristic trait. After a life of con- 
tinual effort, of perpetual contact with men and things, after 
the Avorld had done its worst toward him, both in applause and 
in censure, he still reveled in the aerial gayety, and many- 
tinted summer-like beauty, the genial, though keen sagacity, 
of Midsummer's Night's Dream. Of Shakespeare's plays that 
was his favorite. It is a very remarkable circumstance ; tell- 
ing of a gentleness of nature, a kind, gleesome humor, an ex- 
uberant unstrained force and freshness of intellect, surely rare 
among theologians. As kindred to this, and of still deeper 
beauty, we may regard his tender playful affection for his in- 
fant grandson. He writes to little Tommy with the perfect 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 473 

sympathy of one whom the world has still left guileless as a 
child ; he relates little anecdotes for his amusement ; tells him 
of birds' nests ; demonstrates to him, with syllogistic conclu- 
siveness, that it is a logical mistake to love his hobby-horse 
better than his grandpapa, simply because the former is " big- 
gest :" he does not forget to send him toys when at a distance, 
he makes him feel himself quite a man as he stands beside 
grandpapa assisting him to range his books ; and best of all, 
he leads him, by kind, winning, imperceptible ways, to the foot- 
stool of their common Father. The child of four, and the 
veteran of threescore, kneel down together alone, that the 
smile of God may light on both His children ! 

There is one negative characteristic which is, we suppose, 
constant in men deserving to be called, in any right sense, 
great. They are perfectly free of knowingness ; of the light- 
sniffing, nil admirari mood, that trembles at the thought of a 
sneer ; they are more simple than other men. This was sig- 
nally the case with Chalmers. 

It is by looking at the inner life of Chalmers, at his walk 
with God, that we come to know and understand him. It is 
by knowing well what he was in his closet, that we can explain 
what he was in the world of men. The three reverences that 
figure so largely in Goethe's system were all found there ; with 
this difference, that the word and feeling of reverence were ap- 
plied to no finite being, but only to the Infinite God. The 
" trust thyself of Emerson, that " iron string to which every 
heart vibrates," was never shown in any better than in him ; but 
it was held, not as the whole truth, but as half of the truth, 
which could never become the whole. It was the self-trust of 
humility, not of pride ; it was the trust that knew the world, 
hanging as it seems on nothing, to be yet upheld by the hand 
of God ; it was the trust which felt nothing finite worthy to be 



474 THOMAS CHALMERS 

feared, since a chord of love bound him eternally to the very- 
heart of God. He trusted himself as David, Paul, Luther, 
Cromwell trusted ; but it was among the finite he did so ; be- 
fore his God, he lay low. He trusted himself to face the 
worl j, but not to scale the universe. Christianity has furnished 
a greater number of courageous, iron-built men, than either phi- 
losophy or any religion besides itself can show ; but the stern- 
est and greatest of them bowed the head to the Highest. 
Christianity leaves no place for cowardice, while it blasts the 
eye of pride. Chalmers was a man of prayer ; he was much 
alone with God. And how much is included in this assertion ? 
Did the world shout and adulate? Its voice became silent 
and of little moment when the inner chambers of the heart 
were flung open before the eye of God, searching into the re- 
cesses of the soul, casting a ray of celestial pureuess, in whose 
light motes, else invisible, were seen. Did the world rage and 
scorn? Its frown became of small importance in the smile of 
God, its rage and tumult of slight avail, if the voice that called 
order out of chaos said, " Let there be light." The hallowing 
influence of habitual prayer pervaded his' whole life ; to com- 
fort in adversity, to strengthen in toil, to cheer in battle, to 
sober in victory. Humble yet courageous, weak yet strong, 
he saw himself filled with human frailty and human faults, yet 
he shone before the eyes of men. 

The deep sagacity which had been ripening during a lifetime 
•was true and sure at its quiet close. " The public is just a big 
baby 1" What a profound and deliberate knowledge of society 
is here ; and what a comparison ! A big baby ! a great, pulpy, 
lumbering thing, that could do nothing but bawl ! Yet how he 
grasped to his heart any really noble and godly man ; even 
with a kiss, as Tholuck said in amazement ! The true individ- 
ual soul, and the real hidden work, were still what he dearly 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 475 

loved. Fiom the glare of observation he shrimk aside; but 
you might have seen him in Burke's Close, in the West Port, 
at his old work, bringing Heaven's light into the hovel and the 
heart of the poor. 

Taken all in all, he was a noble type of the Christian man. 
He showed how Christianity embraces and ennobles, but does 
not cramp or curtail humanity ; how, in that divine influence, 
all old things do indeed pass away, but leave no desert behind, 
for a fairer verdure springs, beautified by immortal flowers, 
and nourished from living fountains, in an inner world where 
all things have become new. The vital warmth which would 
pervade a system of society really Christian, can be but coun- 
terfeited and galvanically mimicked by worldliness; Chris- 
tianity extends her claim and dominion over every thing, if it 
have the one characteristic of being good. From the breast 
of Chalmers all the counterfeits of worldliness were banished, 
but the goodly company of healthful human emotions, of no- 
ble human attributes, entered in their stead. The cold affecta- 
tions, the hypocritic smiles, the mellifluous falsehood, the 
greedy complaisance, all the glitter by which fashion hides her 
heart of ice, never found any point of adherence in him ; but 
the manly and genial deference of true politeness, a politeness 
based on the essential equality in the sight of God of "all 
human souls," was truly his ; to peer and peasant, he was the 
same self-respecting, yet truly modest and courteous man — no 
touch of trepidation, no tone of flattery, toward the one ; no 
" insolence of condescension," no patronizing blandness, toward 
the other. He loved genial mirth and a deep hearty laugh ; 
the simplicity of etiquette, the giggle of frivolity, were alike 
alien to his nature. 

It is well, likewise, to remember, that his heart was ever 
kept warm and fresh by those gentle ministries which nature 



4*76 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

has appointed, and Christianity, of course, sanctions : by the 
tender influences of home, by the wife of his bosom, and the 
children whom God had given him. These are nature's general 
means, and doubtless they are, in general, the best to preserve 
health in the whole system of thought, of feeling, and of action. 
The man who plays for an hour or two at bowls with his chil- 
dren, as his elder found Chalmers doing, will not likely, with 
Godwin or any other, fabricate for you a world on philosophic 
principles, with ice figures going by clockwork for men, and 
painted in the highest style of art. Follow the ecclesiastic, or 
professor, from the debate or the conclave, into his own home ; 
there see him, in his warm arm-chair, with his three daughters 
near him, one shampooing his feet, another talking the sort of 
nonsense which she knows will set him into fits of laughter, 
and the third making up the perfect harmony by playing the 
tunes of dear old Scotland ; can you apprehend narrowness or 
fanaticism in that man ? Will not that laugh shake out of the 
heart every taint of theological rancor, lift from the brow every 
shade of gloom, express that unromantic, unostentatious, un- 
speakable comfort, which fills a really Christian home ? These 
are drops of sweetness instilled into the very fountain of the 
life ; no wonder that the streams are clear, and musical, and 
bordered with flowers. 

Those combinations in which nature most cunningly dis- 
plays her power, and which give the rare and excelling charac- 
ter, were variously represented by Chalmers ; his mind was 
rarely complete and symmetrical. An eye to see, a voice to 
speak, an arm to do : few men have had all three as Chalmers. 
The strength that can stand alone : the social sympathy that 
plants little grappling gold-hooks of love in all surrounding 
hearts : the receptive faculty to grasp the thoughts of others, 
to sift them, to compare them, to mete their power of light to 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 477 

reveal truth and of lightning to blast error, to make the world 
an armory : the independent and original energy by which 
nevertheless the character acts freely and naturally : the power 
of saying, deliberately and irreversibly, No ; the tenderness 
that often wept ; reverence toward God, respect toward man, 
love toward all : — we can assert for him each of these. 

The balancing of hope and apprehension is an important 
consideration in the elimination of character. It seems, as we 
once before remarked, a providential arrangement that hope 
generally prevails in the noblest and greatest minds. Chal- 
mers was sunny in his whole nature. Fear plays a very 
slight part in his mental or external history. It had a small 
share in his conversion ; it was rather the conviction that the 
remedy needed for the world was deeper than he had formerly 
deemed, the holiness without which a man can not see God, 
something above the virtue of philosophy, which led to that 
great change. And in all his works there are cheerfulness, 
hope, courage — no touch of despondency or misanthropy. 
Yet his mind was of no flimsy, romantic cast. He knew the 
world was a stern reality, with ribs of rock and veins of iron, 
not to be softened and tamed into perpetual mildness and do- 
cility by poet, pedant, or philosopher. He had enough of 
hope to make him work cheerfully and indefatigably ; he had 
enough of fear, of soberness and apprehension, to avert despair 
at the results of his work. 

" The king-becoming graces, 
As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, 
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, 
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude," 

were all in some measure his ; and in him they flowed from 
the only Source from which they can flow in strength and purity. 



4*78 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

If required to give his radical characteristic in one word, we 
should saj, that, as man and as thinker, he was a great mass 
of common sense. He had a giant's grasp of the fundamental 
facts of man's existence, an inborn notion how this world is 
put together ; he was not the man to build you metaphysical 
palaces, mist skillfully tinted by moonshine, or to lead you, 
with clear small safety -lamp, through argumentative mazes; 
but he had a profound consciousness of those unseen principles 
by which men actually live and work ; he was a man, we de- 
liberately say it, against whom a nation might lean. To use 
a comparison applied by himself in the case of Edward Irving, 
he was a force of gi'avitation, not of magnetism. 

And his books, which it is unnecessary to review, are dis- 
tinguished in a manner correspondent to this. They were 
now round him in many substantial volumes, and more were 
to be given to the world after his death. They embodied that 
grand idea which lent sublimity to his life, the union of 
humanity with Christianity, the omnipotence, in the man and 
in the nation, of the Gospel of Jesus. He is the king o^ prac- 
tical theologians. Those books do not abound with learned 
disquisitions or erudite quotations ; but they take bold broad 
views of man and his salvation, and they burn all over with 
the blended fire of lofty human emotion and lowly Christian 
faith. If you do not find in them the delicacies of a minute in- 
genuity, or the meager exactness of logical formula, you meet 
with those great ideas which may be called the Icey ideas in 
systems of religion, ethics, and polity ; with which, if your 
hand is not specially weak, you can solve, far and wide, the 
practical problems of life. It has been objected that they are 
filled with iteration, and their style has often been called de- 
clamatory. There is doubtless something in the charges. 



THOMAS CHALMERS. 479 

But it should be remembered that Chalmers was by instinct 
an enforcer, a preacher of truth ; he would fling thunderbolt 
on thunderbolt, till he sent one fairly home ; he looked upon 
what he delivered not so much as something for its own sake 
to be demonstrated, as what was to tell on the public mind, 
and be impressed upon it with that view. He wrote with the 
sound of the world in his ears ; every one of his books seems 
anchored to earth. 

At last his earthly Sabbath came to an end. He had been 
in London, giving evidence before a committee of the House 
of Commons. His intellect, as this evidence testifies, was stiil 
clear and strong, and in private he was the same quiet ^ut 
genial and hearty man that he had ever been. He visited Mr. 
Carlyle, and the two extraordinary Scotchmen had an acquies- 
cing and cordial conversation, with " a great deal of laughing 
on both sides." He returned to Edinburgh about the time 
when the Assembly of the Free Church met ; on Friday, May 
28, 1847. 

On the Sabbath evening that followed, he was more than 
usually benignant and genial ; but a cloud might be seen to flit 
across his features, and walking in the garden he was heard, in 
low but very earnest tones, saying, " O Father, my Heavenly 
Father !" His general aspect, however, was one of cheerful 
and genial composure. 

Next day, the May morning rose over Arthur Seat, and the 
Castle rock, and the spires and palaces of that lordly city 
which he loved so well. Men rose bustling after the Sunday 
rest, and the conversation in town would turn largely on the 
doings of the two assemblies, and the appearance he was to 
make that day. But as the hours wore on a whisper stole 
over the city, stopping for a moment every breath : Chalmers 



480 THOMAS CHALMERS. 

was dead. One had entered his room in the morninir and 
found him motionless : " he sat there, half erect, his head re- 
clining gently on his pillow ; the expression of his countenance 
that of fixed and majestic repose." The land mourned for 
him, as Judah and Israel mourned for the good kings of old. 



PART THREE. 



OUTLOOK. 



21 



CHAPTER I. 

THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY, 

In the first part of this work, we made reference to that 
modern school of infidelity which holds of pantheism ; and. in 
succeeding portions, we have mainly endeavored to combat its 
views and tendencies. But there is another school of infidel- 
ity, to which we have but alluded in passing, and which, 
whether from the magnitude of its pretensions, the talent of 
its disciples, or the appalling completeness of its results, de- 
serves consideration. We mean the school of Auguste Comte, 
the far-famed Positive Philosophy. To it we devote the pres- 
ent chapter. 

We found the essential characteristic of modern pantheism 
to be an assertion of the divinity of man. Somewhat of study 
and reflection was necessary to assure us of this. But in the 
case of the Positive Philosophy there is no such labor necessa- 
ry : it wears its distinctive dogma written on its brow. The 
ancient Jewish high-priest wore on his forehead, as a sign be- 
fore which armies and emperors should bow down, the mystic 
name of Jehovah : this philosophy bears as its badge the ex- 
press and conclusive legend, There is no God. 

We have said that we had, in the preceding pages, but 
alluded to the atheistic science of Comte. Though not, how- 
ever, naming either him or his philosophy, we have already, 
we have no hesitation in asserting, come into the neighborhood 



484 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

of both. We have known them in their prototypes. For M. 
Comte, we had the Baron D'Holbach ; for the Positive Philos- 
ophy, the System of Nature. We institute no individual com- 
parison between D'Holbach and Comte ; we should think it 
beyond doubt that the latter was by far the abler man ; but, 
in their respective systems, no one, we think, can fail to per- 
ceive an essential similarity, beneath a partial and superficial 
difference. The point from which they start is the same ; the 
goal at which they arrive is one : their general method is 
identical. The axiom from which they set out is, that nothing 
is to be believed save what is seen, heard, handled ; the com- 
mon goal is atheism ; the method is that of physical science. 
The advance of knowledge has occasioned considerable change 
in the general aspect and finish of the edifice of scientific 
atheism ; what D'Holbach conceived to be an exhibition of 
the physical origin of life, has proved to be a childish mistake ; 
a great deal, probably, of sentimental foolery, about suicide 
and the like, has been, as faded drapery, put aside ; the walls 
have been newly overlaid with scientific mortar, tempered by 
modern enlightenment ; the whole has been refitted, according 
to the most improved modern methods, with an utter regard- 
lessness to expense. But the very fact of these recent amend- 
ments and repairs might have suggested that it was the old 
house, freshly swept and garnished, in which a new crew had 
come to habit. The universal appearance and proclamation 
of system — the endless ranges of pillars, the countless museum- 
cases, the perpetual diagrams, the reiterated profession of 
power to explain all things and annihilate wonder — might 
have led us to suspect that the spirit of D'Holbach (if it is 
not an insult to the man to suppose he had a spirit) reigned 
within. 

The original axiom of the Positive Philosophy is, that the 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 485 

immaterial exists not, that sense is the sole source of evidence. 
Alleging that man can not prove the existence of a Divine 
Being, or of a spirit, refusing to believe aught which can not 
be defined in language and precisely comprehended in thought, 
its advocates prefer the alternative of utterly denying the ex- 
istence of an invisible world, and a system of spiritual rela- 
tions connecting man therewith, to that of accepting instinct, 
listening to faith, or bowing to revelation. 

It might be interesting to trace, in a few departments, the 
mode in which this philosophy would take practical manifesta- 
tion. We are unable here to do more than indicate the method 
in which the reader may work out a whole scheme of its ope- 
ration. Its general effect would be to circumscribe every prov- 
ince of affairs : to cabin, crib, confine the spirit of social life : 
to limit advancement to one path, to turn the eye of man to 
earth, to pronounce those mighty hopes which have been said 
to make us men, mere toys of the nursery. If it retained the 
word duty, it would restrict its operation entirely to that be- 
tween man and man ; duty would become synonymous with 
interest, and conscience with calculation ; the decalogue would 
be a series of arithmetical conclusions. There would be a 
great enumeration of motives ; but they would all have one 
characteristic ; they would hint of their father's house by 
always whispering the word system. They would be cut and 
squared, weighed and measured, committed to memory and 
carefully remembered ; they would never kindle the eye or 
flush the cheek, they would have none of that inspiring indefi- 
niteness, of that animating suggestion of something infinite, 
which has ever roused and supported men ; they would all be 
known, ticketed, and brought out for use, as methodically as a 
gardener's tools or a grocer's measures : for this is the science 
that knows, and sees, and annihilates alike the weakness of en- 



486 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

thusiasm and the ^Yeakness of hope. The moralist and the 
political economist would become almost the same : the one 
might more particularly devote himself to investigate the 
mode in which commercial equity might have full action, how 
each man might have his own ; the other might direct special 
attention to the means of obtaining most to be divided : the 
commission of each would emanate from the shop. And so 
you would have a science of political economy not undeserv- 
ing the name of the " dismal science ;" for it would proceed on 
the supposition, that, when you had classified a few of the facts 
of man's existence, and the laws by which they are connected, 
you had reached the secret of government and prosperity, you 
couid wind up the clock at pleasure : however far it went, and 
it might embrace much important matter, it could never go 
farther than the philosophy, of which it was an offshoot, goes 
with the individual man ; it might admirably lay bare and ex- 
plain the mechanism of society, but it would altogether ignore 
the soul of society. What would be the fate of religion 1 It 
had been one of the great mistakes and delusions of the human 
race ; but, if there still subsisted aught to take the name, it 
would be the obligation of the social contract, or whatever it 
might be which bound men to the State ; its high-priest would 
be the hangman. How would this philosophy affect friend- 
ship ? It would narrow it to those sympathies which are pres- 
ent, seen, calculable; it would change it into copartnery. 
The Platonic friendship originated when two persons were 
knit by the sympathy of a common ardor in the pursuit of 
truth ; they sat beside each other, and strove jointly to keep 
the head of the snow-white steed toward the heavenly dwelling 
of perfection, and to curb the base black horse that ever strove 
earthward ; but friends according to the Positive Philosophy, 
would unyoke the celestial courser altogether, and be united 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 487 

by the sympathy of a common desire to break the passion 
steed Tvell in, that it might go softly in the provision-cart. 

Thus we might proceed ; noting how all human things are 
by the Positive Philosophy circumscribed, diminished, cramp- 
ed. We ask no more, in order to impart to us perfect confi- 
dence in so proceeding, than the original axiom, that sense is 
the only source of evidence, that the immaterial does not exist, 
that every motive and sympathy is defined and bounded by 
the cradle on the one hand, and the grave on the other. We 
are very far from asserting that all who, more or less, favor 
the doctrines of Comte would go this length ; the atmosphere 
of the world still retains too much of the old taint of religion 
and metaphysics to render that possible ; and, as we have 
said, whatever its defects, its disciples can point to what seems 
a goodly amount of actual attainment, of solid work, on the 
part of positive science. Yet, if the expressly negative nature 
of all its reasoning is borne in mind, and the strictly logical 
result of its method accepted, it can not, we think, be alleged 
that we misrepresent. 

To this there will, perhaps, be yielded a more cordial assent, 
when we endeavor, in a few sentences, to trace in outline that 
achievement which is aimed at by the Positive Philosophy. 
This is the more necessary, because, in order to address any 
effective argument to the advocates of an opinion, we must 
learn what recommends it to their sympathies, and, in order 
to vindicate truth, we must know the most formidable aspect 
of error. 

Let us suppose, then, that it has accomplished all which it 
professes its power to achieve. Agricultural science has done 
its work. The most rugged soil has yielded to the skill of 
man. The unwholesome and barren marsh has been drained 
and plowed ; where once it was, the corn now waves, or the 



488 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

rich meadow, amid whose flowers the bees are humming, and 
where sheep and cattle stray, spreads out beautiful in the 
noonday sun. To the top of the mountain the plow has been 
carried, and the eternal snows and tempests have seen their 
ancient domain curtailed by the power of chemistry and me- 
chanics. The world has burst forth in opulence of crop, and 
fruit, and flower, and the glad light that rests above it more 
than realizes the vision of the golden age. Commerce has 
done its work. The tempest of the deep has at length been 
bridled and subdued by man ; science went to watch the mon- 
ster in the homeless tracts where he sought his prey, and 
learned at last to trace his footstep, to know his approach, 
and to balk his utmost might. Each soil produces, to the 
full of scientific culture, what it is naturally fitted to grow ; 
and a universal free trade and perfection of transmission have 
put the production of every soil within the reach of the in- 
habitant of every other, as if it grew at his ovm door. Loco- 
motion has been fully developed ; internal communication has 
reached a perfection which renders it but a slight figure that 
time and space are annihilated. History and political science 
have been perfected. The past has yielded all its secrets to 
tireless research and penetrative criticism : the philosopher 
can look back on the prospect of the bygone ages, and see, 
clearly bodied forth, the work and warring, the joy and sor- 
row, all the varied pageantry, of all generations. The light 
of political economy has risen high and burned bright, fed 
with oil by the sister science of history. The inducements 
which wealth can bring to bear on man have all been summed, 
the means of its production and the laws of its distribution 
ascertained, and the all-embracing doctrine of social existence 
fully promulgated and enforced, that if all work peacefully in 
their several stations, each will obtain the greatest amount 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 489 

possible of food and clothing. Tlie museuni of the world has 
been finally furnished and arranged, the storehouse of the 
world filled, the movements of the stars set forth in geometric 
diagrams, the exhaustive system of the Positive Philosophy 
completed. 

We shall grant that, if our attempt has fliiled, it is yet as- 
suredly possible to draw a picture of the ultimate attainment 
of physical science, which, realizable or not, will have an im- 
posing aspect. Let it be added, also, that the whole is put in, 
not in the gaudy colors of romance, or with the delusive license 
of poetry ; the positive philosopher makes no demand on your 
enthusiasm, but, for that very reason, claims the more ready 
accordance of your belief The air is pervaded by philosophic 
calm : the professor deals solely in demonstration, the pupils 
talk in formula. It is not to .us inexplicable that the Positive 
Philosophy enjoys its popularity. 

But, when we have exhausted all that can be said in favor 
of the school of positive atheism, we must hold by our original 
assertion, that its tendency is to discrown man, and to take the 
light oflf the universe. What is all this wealth, what all this 
power which it offers ? They are, at the very best, the bribe 
which earth offers to the human being, to induce him to deny 
his celestial origin and barter his spiritual inheritance. What 
is all that fabric, rising in its still and cold magnificence, cover- 
ing the earth and shutting out the heaven ? It is a magnificent 
tomb for the spirit of man. Deck it as you will, let the flags 
of all the sciences float over it, it is but an ornamented grave. 
And if you tell me that creatures still move about within it, I 
will refuse to call those living men who declare themselves 
" cunning casts in clay," and profess that the souls are out of 
them. The mummies in the pyramids wear the human form, 
yet we do not call them men. The password into that fabric 
21 * 



400 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

is an insult, the bitterest of insults, to man ; it suppo.ses that 
it is possible to find food so abundant and clothing so rare, that 
it will woo him to abdicate his spiritual throne, and declare 
himself an animal. We would not give the delusion of religion 
for all the realization of the philosophy of Comte ! Where it 
comes, all waxes dim : its foot blackens the stars. For why- 
should I care to look to these stars, if they are but a mockery 
of my little day of life? or why should I delight to search into 
the beauty and the bounty of the earth around me, if it gives 
me but a table and a grave, and, by instilling into my veins 
some maddening poison, has left me the possibility of imagining 
for myself a better fate '? Physical science itself, which, when 
subordinate to higher ends, I can cultivate and prize, is ruined 
utterly by this pretentious but fatal alliance : in the words of 
Chalybseus, it either becomes the handmaid of a poor curiosity, 
or a " partner of trade." 

How deeply melancholy is the life of man, if he has no in- 
heritance in the past or the future ; if there are no might}'- na- 
tions of the dead; if the friends he has loved are loathsome 
clay, and between himself and annihilation there is but a 
breath! How all the dewy umbrage of his sympathies is 
withered, the fountains of his heart dried up ! A man comes 
upon the world with mighty powers, capable of exerting an 
influence which will outlive his day by millenniads. He stands 
in his own little generation, but by some strange destiny, his 
mind's dwelling is all time ; on his own little world, but his 
mind's dwelling is immensity. He acts, or thinks, or sings. 
If he has planned an Alexandria or a Babylon, he must pass 
away ere its streets and quays are ranged in the order in 
which his mind's eye saw them; if he has desolated realms, he 
m.ust pass away ere nature, weeping over them in rain, and 
smiling in sunshine, wraps them again in soothing green. If 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 491 

he has pondered, half a lifetime, on the state and the destinies 
of man, and reared some theory to renovate and save his race, 
he must depart ere any save its initial effects are seen. If he 
have sung some mighty song, which has taken the ear of the 
ages, and to which, with the noble pride of genius, he can see 
generation after generation, through the long vista of years, 
pausing to listen, he must himself lie down and die when per- 
haps only a few bosoms have thrilled to its music. Man here has 
only time to do his work, and dig his grave. If he can believe 
that all the buried generations have gone onward to another 
state of existence, and if he can himself look forward to a pro- 
tracted life, in which he will retain his personality, his connec- 
tion with humanity, and that interest in all things human which 
marked the range of his humanity here, he may work in the 
sense of inducements really sublime and penalties really awful. 
But how he shrivels in the glance of the Positive Philosophy. 
Man the animal were a pitiful and anomalous thing, all whose 
grandeur arose from delusion ; a dreamer of empire in a tene- 
ment of clay : man the spirit wanders through eternity, and is 
formed verily in the image of God. 

We shall not formally and at length assail the Positive Phi- 
losophy. We presume that the reasoning by which material- 
ism is to be overthrown is now pretty well elaborated, and 
that it does not admit of important addition, that a man may 
now sum up and balance the arguments for and against, with 
conviction pretty well assured, that none others of importance 
are to be adduced. We shall, however, bring against this 
latest form of materialism one argument which we deem amply 
sufficient to overthrow it, and which, from the great educational 
pretensions of the science of Comte, has a speciality of appli- 
cation to it which is a true originality. We, indeed, are not 
the first so to apply it ; the metaphysician of the day has vir- 



492 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

tually done so, and we shelter ourselves under his shield. It 
is the argument that the Positive Philosophy, like every sys- 
tem of materialism, really cuts away its own ground, that the 
more it acquires the less it can enjoy ; that it inevitably weak- 
ens the human mind ; that it might be represented by a de- 
ceiving magician, who offered to his dupe a magnificent estate, 
alleging that he had merely to till and enjoy it, while there 
lurked in the soil some fatal necromantic power to palsy the 
arm that turned it, and deaden the palate which tasted its 
fruit. 

Sir William Hamilton, in allusion to the effect of the phi- 
losophy of Condillac in France, a philosophy essentially the 
same as Comte's, in silencing discussion and rendering philos- 
ophy synonymous with the observation and comparison of phys- 
ical phenomena, has the following passage : 

" Nor would such a result have been desirable, had the one 
exclusive opinion been true, as it was false ; innocent, as it was 
corruptive. If the accomplishment of philosophy imply a ces- 
sation of discussion, if the result of speculation be a paralysis 
of itself; the consummation of knowledge is the condition of 
intellectual barbarism. Plato has profoundly defined man, 
' the hunter of truth ;' for in this chase, as in others, the jDur- 
suit is all in all, the success comparatively nothing. ' Did the 
Almighty,' says Lessing, ' holding in his right hand Truth, and 
in his left Search after Truth, deign to proffer me the one, I 
might prefer — in all humility, but without hesitation, I should 
request — Search after Truth.'' We exist only as we energize ; 
pleasure is the reflex of unimpeded energy" ; energy is the mean 
by which our faculties are developed ; and a higher energy the 
end which their development proposes. In action is thus con- 
tained the existence, happiness, improvement, and perfection 
of our being ; and knowledge is only precious, as it n;ay afford 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 493 

a stimulus to the exercise of our powers, and the condition of 
their more complete activity. Speculative truth is, therefore, 
subordinate to speculation itself; and its value is directly 
measured by the quantity of energy which it occasions — im- 
mediately in its discovery — mediately through its consequen- 
ces. Life to Endymion was not preferable to death ; aloof 
from practice, a waking error is better than the sleeping truth. 
Neither, in point of fact, is there found any proportion between 
the possession of truths, and the development of the mind in 
which they are deposited. Every learner in science is now 
familiar with more truth than Aristotle or Plato ever dreamt 
of knowing ; yet, compared with the Stagyrite or the Athenian, 
how few, among our masters of modern science, rank higher than 
intellectual barbarians ! Ancient Greece and modern Europe 
prove, indeed, that ' the march of intellect' is no inseparable 
concomitant of 'the march of science;' that the cultivation of 
the individual is not to be rashly confounded with the progress 
of the species. 

" Bat, if the possession of theoretical fiicts be not converti- 
ble with mental improvement, and if the former be important 
merely as subservient to the latter, it follows, that the com- 
parative utility of a study is not to be prvncipally estimated 
by the complement of truths which it may communicate, but 
by the degree in which it determines our higher capacities to 
action. * * * ^f 

" On this ground (which we have not been able fully to 
state, far less adequately to illustrate), we rest the pre-eminent 
utility of metaphysical speculations. That they comprehend 
all the sublimest objects of our theoretical and moral interest ; 
that every (natural) conclusion concerning God, the soul, the 
present worth, and the future destiny of man, is exclusively 
metaphysical, will be at once admitted. But we do not found 



494 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

the importance on the paramount dignity of the pursuit. It is 
as the best gymnastic of the mind, as a mean, principally and 
almost exclusively conducive to the highest education of our 
noblest powers, that we would vindicate to these speculations 
the necessity which has too frequently been denied them. By 
no other intellectual application (and least of all by physical 
pursuits), is the soul thus reflected on itself, and the faculties 
concentered in such independent, vigorous, unwonted, and con- 
tinued energy ; by none, therefore, are its best capacities so 
variously and intensely evolved. ' Where there is most life, 
there is the victory.' " * 

We shall not say that we unreservedly subscribe to each 
particular clause in this powerful passage ; but we hold that it 
furnishes an overpowering argument against the Positive Phi- 
losophy. That philosophy annihilates a hemisphere of human 
thought and endeavor ; and the hemisphere which it annihilates 
is that in which all the sublime constellations burn. It can be 
necessary to add no word on the value of metaphysics as a 
discipline of mind ; but a few words m.ay not be out of place 
to suggest the corresponding value of religion. 

The Positive Philosophy is explicit in its denunciation both 
of the former and of the latter ; religion was the first great 
human delusion, metaphysics was the second: the course of 
humanity, according to it, has been that of the North Ameri- 
can Indian, who, as he gradually imbibes ideas and forms hab- 
its of civilization, lays aside, one by one, the bits of painted 
glass, and the strings of beads, and the gaudy feathers, which 
were ere while his glory ; we should rather, on its hypothesis, 
say, that it was that of the monarch, who ruled well, and looked 
proudly, in his youth and manhood, but on whom the dotage 
of age came, and who laid aside his diadem, and unclasped 
his royal robe, and shut himself into a grave that he had hewn 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 495 

for himself in a rock. If we might venture on indicating a 
difference and relation, more or less partial and strict, between 
the nature and influence of the mental gymnastic of metaphys- 
ics, and what results from that element in religion which is not 
of the nature of a truth discovered, but of a truth accepted, 
not of reason but of faith, we should say it might be figured 
by the difference and relation between light and heat, between 
truth and beauty, between strength and gentleness. The moral 
world, alleges the positive philosopher, requires no Sun. Not 
so, answers the metaphysician, for then there were no light, no 
knowledge ; what you call Positive Science, when taken alone, 
is no knowledge at all. Not so, answers the religious man. 
for then there were no heat ; the culinary fire of your provision 
shop, the Plutonic fire of your furnaces, will never array earth 
in its summer raiment, or cause. its face to break into its sum- 
mer smile. And if metaphysical training makes man intel- 
lectually strong, religion is required to give him a beauty and 
a gentleness. We found pantheism wrap man in a mail of 
pride, which we could pronounce none other than a mail of 
madness. Positive Science seems to make man very humble, 
but it too leaves him proud ; only the pride of pantheism was 
that of a monarch who said he was well enough, and required 
no aid from God ; that of atheism is the pride of him who, though 
beggared, prefers living on husks to returning to his Father. 

There must not be taken from man the belief in an Infinite ; 
in that belief alone can his whole nature be developed and 
displayed : thus alone does he find the humility that does not 
degrade him, and the honor that makes him not proud, the 
faith that clothes him in strength, and the reverence that 
breathes over his face a soflened majesty, the love that makes 
him a fellow of angels, and the fear that reminds him he is 
still on the earth, the blessing that breathes tenderly on his 



496 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

pathway here, and the hope that beckons from the golden walls. 
There is a beauty in the face of man when his God smiles on 
it, as on the face of the babe in his cradle on which a father 
looks in joy, which must not be taken away. There is an 
earnestness in the heart and life of a man, when he knows that 
the eye of the Eternal is on him, which must not be foregone. 
There is an eternity of consequence in every act of an immor- 
tal, which he can not deny and continue to work. The finite 
being staggers in bewilderment when separated from the In- 
finite ; he can not stand alone in the universe ; he can not de- 
fame his spirit without darkening it, he can not scorn faith 
without weakening reason, he can not deny God and reach the 
full strength and expansion of his faculties as a man. Cole- 
ridge sa^^s truly that religion makes all glorious on which it 
looks. How poor the education for my highest faculties, ob- 
tained by going round the w^orld to learn in what order its 
phenomena are ranged, and discover, as my highest reward, 
new food to eat and new raiment wherewithal I may be 
clothed ! How effectual and sublime is the education I receive 
in the survey, if every object I meet is gifted with a power of 
exhaustless suggestion, and every leaf of the forest and star of 
the sky is a commissioned witness for God, and not the most 
careless trill of woodland melody, no chance gleam of sunlight 
over the fountain that leaps from the crag, and reckless as it 
is, must stay to reflect in its rainbowed loveliness the beauty 
of heaven, no wild wave tossing joyously on the pathless deep, 
but has power to call into action my highest and holiest pow- 
ers, of wonder, of reverence, of adoration ! Could no other 
argument be brought against the Positive Philosophy, than the 
effect it would necessarily have on the education of the race, by 
excluding, so to speak, religion and metaphysics from the world- 
school, it were argument sufficient. 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 497 

Listening to the magniloquent professions of this philosophy, 
and looking at the results to which it may in some sort lay 
claim, it is important to inquire whether, and to what extent, 
its teaching is likely to be accompanied with success. We 
must not omit, however, to remark, that the atheistic science 
can nowise lay claim to the whole achievement of Baconian 
induction. Physical pursuits managed at least to subsist when 
unallied with atheism, nay, we suspect that even for them the 
alliance would be cramping and pernicious. Bacon denounced 
atheism in absolute and unmeasured terms, and Newton never 
turned his eye toward the stars without looking for the light 
of God, which they revealed. 

Of the ultimate success of the Positive Philosophy we have 
no fear. Instinct is stronger than argument. It is not natural 
for man to find his all in this world. The gravitation of rea- 
soning beings toward the moral Sun of the universe is too 
strong to be permanently or altogether broken. Where un- 
tutored man acts in the mere strength of nature, we are met 
by spectacles which, however sad, have one element of sub- 
limity, in that they bear witness to man's belief in his spiritual 
nature ; at the other end of the scale, where the loftiest intel- 
lects of the human race rest in the solitude of greatness, we 
receive the same assurance. If I visit the banks of some lone 
Indian river, where the Hindoo superstition still reigns supreme, 
I find I have not yet descended to a rank of humanity in which 
an invisible world is denied or forgotten, and man can name no 
motive strong enough to silence the remonstrances or to defeat 
the offers of sense. The widow is brought out to die on the 
funeral pile of her husband. I may weep over that fair form, 
in its simple beauty, where the blush and the dimple of girlish 
hope are just yielding to the matron smile of perfect woman- 
hood, and deem it all too lovely for the embrace of fire. But 



498 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

even here I will have within rae a haughty consolation, and I 
will gaze with pride in my melancholy, because that here also 
the human spirit asserts its supremacy over pain and death, 
even here, for duty and devotion, a weak woman can die. 
And, if the disciples of M. Comte tell us that this is just one 
of those spectacles which it is their boast to do away with for- 
ever, we point them, as we said, to those minds which the ac- 
clamations of the race pronounce the greatest and best. 
While men gaze in revering pride toward Plato, and honor 
the lofty contempt with which Fichte looked down on the joys of 
sense, while there is rapture in the eye of Poetry, and majesty 
on the brow of Philosophy, sight will not altogether prevail 
against faith, the sense will not, with its foul exhalations, wholly 
choke the spirit. Your light Anacreons, and careless Horaces, 
and frivolous Moores may continue to sing ; even your Gib- 
bons and Humes may still work ; your system-builders, with 
ears deafened by their own hammering and backs bent with 
stooping to their own toil, will not cease to build ; but no 
Homer or Dante, no Shakespeare or Milton, no Coleridge and, 
we even add, no Shelley, will sing under the auspices of the 
Positive Philosophy; your Fichte, your Carlyle, your De 
Quincey, your Tennyson, your Ruskin, will refuse to serve na- 
ture on such conditions ; they will throw up their commissions 
at once. What men have deemed best deserving of the name 
of thought would expire. 

"Why tliought? To toil, and eat, 
Then make our bed in darkness, needs no thought." 

We have been told that immortality inspires the lyric Muse ; 
that it is the light in the distance which kindles her eye ; but 
now her song would be a funeral dirge. We might add quo- 
tation to quotation from our poetry, in indefinitely extended 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 499 

succession, of appeal from this theory, and assertion of a higher 
lot for man. Young exclaims, as if in anger, 

"Were then capacities divine conferr'd, 
As a mock-diadem, in savage sport, 
Rank insult of our pompous poverty. 
Which reaps but pain, from seeming claims so fair?" 

Shelley, with all his profession of atheism, shrinks startled 
from the brink of annihilation : — 

" Shall that alone which knows 
Be as a sword burnt up before the sheath 
By sightless lightning ?" 

Tennyson expressly alleges he would not stay in a world 
where the demonstration of the Positive Philosophy was com- 
plete: he would not confess himself and his fellows to be 
" cunning casts in clay :" — 

" Let science prove we are, and then 

What matters science unto man, 
At least, to me ? I would not stay." 

We suppose the following stanza, in which he again defines 
man, on the hypothesis that he is no more than an animal, and 
has no more to enjoy or look to than the pleasures of sense, is 
one of the finest in poetry : — 

" No more ? a monster, then a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
That tear each other in their slime, 
Were mellow music match'd with him." 

We find, in a poem by Coleridge, which is not, we think, 



500 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

very well known, a general estimate of the absurdity and con- 
tradiction which are all remaining to man when he has denied his 
immaterial and immortal existence. We must be excused for 
quoting it at length : since our present argument has reference 
to the sympathies and instincts of the noble, it can not be re- 
fused even a logical value : — 

"If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom 

Swallow up life's brief flash for ay, we fare 
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom, 

Whose sound and motion not alone declare, 
But are their whole of being ! If the breath 

Be life itself, and not its task and tent, 
K even a soul like Milton's can know death ; 

Man ! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant, 
Tet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes ! 

Surplus of nature's dread activity, 
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd vase, 
Retreating slow, with meditative pause, 

She form'd with restless hands unconsciously ! 
Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! 

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state. 
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, 
The counter-weights ! — Thy laughter and thy tears 

Mean but themselves, each fittest to create. 
And to repay the other! Why rejoices 

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good ? 

Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood. 
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, 

Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf, 
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold ? 
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold 

These costless shadows of thy shadowy self ! 
Be sad ! be glad ! be neither ! seek, or shun ! 
Thou hast no reason why I Thou can'st have none j 
Thy being's being is a contradiction." 



THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. . 601 

Thus we can not entertain any apprehensions of the ultimate 
success of atheistic science. But we speak with a confidence 
no less assured, when we say, that its present diffusion may be 
wide, that it is either expressly the most formidable infidel 
agency of the day, or one of the most formidable. It possesses 
elements of strength which have ever proved powerful. Be- 
sides all that we formerly specified, we may still note, as per- 
taining to this philosophy, two characteristics which render it 
strong : definiteuess and union. And it is favored by circum- 
stances. The general human mind has scarce power to act 
long and earnestly on indirect motives ; let it be once under- 
stood that metaphysics, however useful as a mental gymnastic, 
can yield directly no harvest of truth, and, we suspect, meta- 
physics will not long continue to be pursued. It is this con- 
sideration which leads us to withhold at least an absolute assent 
from what Sir William Hamilton says on this subject ; and if 
metaphysical skepticism can find no arrow in the quiver of the 
great advocate of metaphysical studies, there has, beyond ques- 
tion, been much in the late history of metaphysics to produce 
and encourage it. It is now a widely-known and acknowledged 
fact, that the last great efl[lorescence of metaphysical study in 
Germany withered away without having borne any fruit, that 
when men attempted to take of it and apply it to use, it crumbled 
away m their hands : Hegel, the last great ontologist, died with 
the assertion on his lips that no one understood him . All that 
expenditure of intellect seems to the practical man to have gone 
for nothing, to have been so much mere absolute loss. The 
disciple of Comte is at hand, urgent in pressing on him that 
this is but the last instance of a failure in which the life of the 
best intellect of earth has been wasted, the last earnest attempt, 
with terrestrial arrow, to strike the stars. He will lay forth 
his laws, he will show how they account for phenomena, he will 



502 THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 

prate plausibly of a good that is definite, an end that is seen. 
Here, at least, he will say, is rest ; after six thousand years of 
tossing and groping, the race requires it ; cast away Utopian 
fencies, they but clog the soul in its way to real advantage ; 
take the good you have, and fly not weakly after other that you 
know not of. And then there is Mammon to lend his auxiliary 
prompting, and the hard practicality, the quite unideal nature, 
of every day life, to sanction and second. Let us remember 
well the reign of sensualism in France ; and let us not forget 
that not a little of the ardent and really noble mind of Eng- 
land follows, with more or less completeness of adherence, the 
banner of Comte. Amid decaying systems of metaphysics, 
and systems of religion whose difference is too readily taken as 
a proof of universal unsoundness, the compact, single-eyed band 
of positive atheists may go very far ! 



CHAPTER II. 

PANTHEISTIC S PI K I T UAL I S M. 

We enter not again upon any examination of Pantheism. 
Our object in this chapter is to inquire very briefly what hope 
may be reposed in the infidel spiritualism of the day, in the 
contest which all who believe in a spirit at all may unite in 
waging with the Positive Philosophy. 

The literary atmosphere resounds at present with cries that 
remind us of what is lofty and eternal in the destiny of man. 
We hear of the eternities and the immensities, of the divine 
silences, of the destinies, of load-stars, still, though seen by 
few, in the heavens. We are well-nigh confounded, and, un- 
less we have listened long, are at a loss to attach a meaning 
to the high-sounding but indefinite terms. Meanwhile the 
compact phalanx under the black flag is steadily advancing. 
Can the spiritualistic pantheism which emanated or still ema- 
nates from Mr. Carlyle, oppose to it a line which will not 
easily be broken 1 

We must answer with an emphatic negative. We shall 
state briefly the leading reasons which prevail with us in so 
doing. 

We assert of infidel spiritualism that it is rendered practically 
powerless by one great characteristic; the reverse of that 
which imparts strength to the positive array : it is hopelessly 
indefinite. 



604 PANTHEISTIC SPIRIT L'ALISM. 

The British intellect imperatively demands clearness. We 
think we may venture now to hazard what is partly an assump- 
tion and partly a prediction, that the era of indefiniteness in 
metaphysics and religion is drawing to a close, and will ere 
long have been. A strange delusion seems to have possessed 
these latter years, that metaphysical truth, that discourse about 
the origin, nature, and destiny of man, was necessarily dim, 
obscure, unintelligible to ordinary minds. Presumptuous as 
it may seem in us, we must conceive it possible that, eighty 
or a hundred years hence, the spectacle of Coleridge and his 
gaping circle at Highgate will be regarded with an interest 
quite dissimilar from that which has hitherto attached to it. 
We fancy its interest will partake somewhat of ironical won- 
der. It will be taken as a sign of the singular decay and 
absence of metaphysical study in England. All that incom- 
prehensibility in which the words of the great magician were 
wrapped, will be referred, partly to the want of intellectual 
power in the magician, and in still larger measure to absence 
of philosophical knowledge and metaphysical penetration in 
the audience. Men will have decided that the whole philoso- 
phy of Coleridge, had it arisen in Germany instead of England, 
would have been recognized, not as a wonderful phenomenon, 
worthy to be stared at and bowed down to by all men, but as 
a wing, with fittings of its own, of the general edifice of the 
philosophy of Schelling. In Germany, we imagine, it would 
have produced a few magazine articles, and perhaps a certain 
amount of disputation in the class-room of Schelling : in Eng- 
land it was enough to found an oracle. We are not sure that 
it will even seem presumptuous now to hazard this prediction. 
Clearness has again been vindicated for the language of meta- 
physics, a clearness equal to that of Hume or that of Berkeley : 
and the whole magnificent fabric of painted mist and moon- 



PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 505 

shine, which named itself the philosophy of Schelling, has been 
smitten as by keen lightnings, and may be said to have van- 
ished from the intellectual horizon. This twofold result has 
been attained by one philosopher : Sir William Hamilton 
vrrites with the clearness and smites with the force of light- 
ning. His advent on the philosophic stage we take to have 
marked the date at which the conclusion of the indefinite era 
became certain. 

Now what definiteness do we find in the floating spiritual- 
ism of the day ? We find, in looking toward Mr. Carlyle, 
that, though the Coleridgean distinction between reason and 
understanding may be shelved and laughed at, there is yet 
some esoteric region, removed altogetfter from that of logic, 
where truth is still secluded. We could have thanked Mr. 
Carlyle for his chapter on Coleridge, the cleverness of which 
is absolutely amazing, if he had clearly promulgated the doc- 
trine, that there is more sense and straightforward manliness 
in going at once to the question, Is this true ? than in raising 
endless debate as to how the truth is got at, and whether it is 
handed to us by reason or by understanding ; if he had really 
exposed, as one of our latest hallucinations, the conception that 
truth was to be reached, not by the persistent and earnest use 
of the old time-tried faculties, but by cunningly evolving some 
new faculty, which, by its power to see, or its method of man- 
ipulating truth, would at length bring us into the light of 
knowledge. But we positively discover that Mr. Carlyle him- 
self has some mysterious grove, into which, when hit by the 
sun-shafts of argument, he can retire ; that plain logic and 
everyday reasoning will not suffice to combat any doctrine of 
his ; that the only difference between him and Coleridge is, 
that the latter did name the new and superior faculty reason, 
nay, in his discourses on its nature and function, embodied a 

22 



506 PANTHEISTIC SPIRITCJALI 

large amount of truth, while Mr. Carlyle gives no name what- 
ever to his Dodona grove, and demands belief without even 
a verbal reason for its accordance. Looking, too, from the 
means by which truth is attained, to the truth arrived at, is 
not the indefiniteness still extreme 1 We say not that, save 
in one or two perplexing instances, the great author of whom 
we now speak ever writes without having a deep meaning in 
his words ; but we now speak of the applicability of his teach- 
ing, and of that of his whole school, to the positive education 
of the race, to the practical opposition of atheism. And what 
a ghastly prospect opens before us ! We put the question, 
What is the outlook for eternity ? Amid much denunciation 
of doubt, we learn thaf we can not be assuredly answered, that 
a look into f jturity is a look into a " great darkness." We 
ask, What is virtue, and how we are to perform the duties of 
our station 1 We are told that hero-worship is the all-em- 
bracing formula of duty, and that in its performance we attcJn 
unto the three reverences. When, at last, we are driven by 
the inappeasable demand of our souls to say. Who is the Lord, 
that we may serve Him 1 we are told that even once-honored 
Pantheism is but matter for a jest, and that all we can know 
of God is that He is inscrutable. A new proclamation of the 
worship of the Unknown God will hardly serve for the practi- 
cal teaching of the world. 

On this last sublime and solemn theme, we must be permit- 
ted to oifer a remark. There may exist a spurious humility, 
and mock reverence, which will not honor God, and will de- 
fraud man of his highest glory. It does not honor God to 
make Him one with the Fate of Paganism, and virtually al- 
lege that His creatures can not or dare not draw near to Him : 
and if I can not in some way know my God, where is the dis- 
tinction of my birthright from that of the beasts that perish ? 



PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 50*7 

Contemplating the universe in its vastness, all alit as it is with 
radiance, remembering that proximity is but relative, and that 
the particles of a sand-grain may to God appear no more in 
contact than the clustering galaxies whose distance we can not 
sum, it is in the power of the human mind, by an effort of ab- 
straction, to figure it all as a bush, burning in the desert of 
immensity, to which the reasoning spirit, in hallowed awe, yet 
with a certain sublime confidence, may draw near to see its 
God. Let the shoes be from the feet, let no rash or irrever- 
ent approach be made, but let no human being shut his ear to 
the voice that calls to him as to the Hebrew prophet. I will 
not reject the highest attribute of my humanity, power to hear 
that voice ; I will not go away, saying, the sight is too great 
for me, and indeed inscrutable. I will look because I am king 
of the earth, and I have my commission from Him who calls : 
I will look with silent reverence, because He is King of the 
universe. 

We proceed to a second argument. 

We need not claim the assent of the followers of Mr. 
Carlyle to the fact that religion must live in a man or nation, 
if he or it is to be strong : this truth has been fully acknowl- 
edged by the school. But we earnestly entreat both the strict 
adherents of Mr. Carlyle, and all those who look for individual 
and social regeneration in an abandonment of the forms of 
Christianity, and the pervasion of the atmosphere of the world 
by a certain lofty spiritual illumination, to consider one great 
historical fact, and one great human characteristic. The his- 
torical fact is, that a religion devoid of forms has never been 
the religion of a nation ; the human characteristic is, that man 
will never bow down before a truth discovered, but only be- 
fore one received on authority, that he will worship by faith 
and not by reason, a God not discovered but revealed. 



508 PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 

"We quote a passage from Jonathan Edwards : — " I sup- 
■W-Qr„ pose it will '^ke-.acknowledged by the deist, that the Christian 
religion is the most rational and pure that ever was established 
in any society of men ; and that they will except only them- 
selves^ as serving God in a manner more according to his will, 
than the Christian manner. But, can any believe that God 
has so wholly thrown away mankind, that there never yet has 
been a society of men that have rightly paid respect to their 
Creator % 

" It is easily proved that the highest end and happiness of 
man is to mew God^s excellences^ to love Him, and receive ex- 
pressions of His love. This love, including all those other 
affections which depend upon, and are necessarily connected 
w^ith it, we express in worship. The highest end of society 
among men, therefore, must be, to assist and join with each 
other in this employment. But how comes it to pass, that 
this end of society was never yet obtained among deists ? 
Where was ever any social worship statedly performed by 
them? And were they disposed socially to express their 
love and honor, which way would they go about it ? They 
have nothing from God to direct them. Doubtless there 
would be perpetual dissensions about it, unless they were 
disposed to fall in with the Christian model. We may be 
convinced, therefore, that revelation is necessary to right 
social worship.'''' 

Is this not a profound and suggestive passage ? And may 
we not say that we have arrived at a time whose very charac- 
teristic it is, as distinguished from other times, that the truth 
it embodies be applied. Man is such a child of the Infinite, 
so indissolubly, consciously or unconsciously, willingly or un- 
willingly, is he bound to an Infinite Creator, that he can act 
earnestly and long, he can bridle passion and cast away sloth, 



PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 509 

he can live well and die calmly, only when strengthened, 
urged, supported, by motives which seem to him infinite. 
The tradition that comes out of a dim antiquity will win his 
homage, the song of his country's bard will inspire him ; but 
the law, however sapient, which was promulgated yesterday, 
acts faintly on his enthusiasm, and the constitution which 
exists merelv on paper, which is written in no time-hallowed 
memories on the heart of the people, though devised by one 
who has exhausted the science of polity, and inaugurated with 
the waving of all a nation's banners, and the flourishing of all 
a nation's trumpets, will either be trodden into the kennels or 
washed out in blood. And if man demands elements of in- 
finitude in the modes and maxims of his everyday life, if his 
faculties will never heartily serve where they can altogether 
grasp, and his emotions lie yerj placid, if he knows precisely 
whence the wind bloweth that is to move them, can we find 
any difficulty in connecting with the general nature and char- 
acter of man the phenomenon which the observant and reflect- 
ive Edwards remarked ? If man sees a brother, by the might 
of his own reason, unvailing the face of God, he will connect 
with that God the element of finitude which attached to His 
revealer, and in neither the fear nor the love with which he re- 
gards Him, will there be that infinite something which is of 
the nature of worship. And since, by a corresponding neces- 
sity, man ever demands forms, since it is an impossibility for 
him to worship mere vague abstractions — a fact which, we 
presume, no serious thinker in the ranks of the spiritualists will 
deny — we are shut up irresistibly to one of two alternatives, 
either to abandon religion altogether, or to find one which in 
origin and form is divine. Let it be remarked, that the form 
of religion is not the same with forms of worship ; the latter 
may vary indefinitely or may not, and yet the religion retain 



510 PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 

iis hold on the heart of a nation ; but the former can not de- 
part, and religion remain. We wish specially to urge this 
argument. It is a great leading doctrine of Mr. Carlyle's, that 
all forms die, that spirit only lives ; and far and wide be- 
yond the ranks of Mr. Carlyle's followers, you may meet with 
vague ideas about the form of Christianity being antiquated, 
but the spirit being yet destined to survive. We bid all who 
entertain such ideas to look well, lest they be harboring an 
absurdity, hoping for an impossibility. Various religious 
ideas have taken form in various religions ; but there is one 
phenomenon which we challenge any one to present to us 
from history, the worship of a personified religious idea, when 
the form of personification was known to be an allegory. If 
the great forms of the Christian religion, the Unity and the 
Trinity, the atonement by the Son, and the operation of the 
Spirit, are considered to body forth certain moral ideas and 
truths, the race may conceivably have worshiped the ideas un- 
der these forms, but, if once it is understood that every such 
embodiment is merely temporary and allegorical, men will do 
with the ideas as they choose, but never again can they receive 
them as a religion. Philosophy and religion can not become 
one : the abstract idea which you receive as a philosophic 
truth, you can not worship, the God before Whom you kneel, 
by whatever name you call Him, can never be to you an ab- 
straction : the idea of philosophy is tmth, the idea of religion 
is life. We beg leave to submit this argument, as a reduction 
of the Carlylian spiritualism to a practical zero. On all who 
own the tremendous power of the religious instinct, we urge 
the necessity of accepting as immovable and eternal, the theo- 
logical facts of Christianity ; or proclaiming a new religion in 
the only way in which a religion as such can be proclaimed, 
on the authority of God, attested by the exertion of infinite 



PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 511 

and creative energy, by suspending or modifying the existing 
laws of nature, in one word, by working miracles ; or, thirdly, 
receding from their position. 

There is, in the present age, and in a country of freedom, an 
awful import in the appeal we here make in favor of positive 
religion. There are terrible powers slumbering in the human 
breast. It is not such an easy matter to frame a religion that 
will make men tremble or work ! We have often thought, 
with a deep and curious interest, on what we have all heard of 
as Mr. Leigh Hunt's Religion of the Heart. We know this 
work only from reliable indirect sources, but the name itself 
is sufficient to hint to us its nature, and enable us to compute 
its reasonableness and likelihood of success. The religion of 
the heart ! The cure of human ills, the satisfaction of human 
doubt, the vanquishing of human- sin, by an appeal to the finer 
feelings, and by the gentle influence of a meek sentimentality ! 
Has Mr. Hunt set forth his theory to Mr. Carlyle, and en- 
deavored to make him a proselyte ? We trust he has. The 
interview would have been worth the theatrical exhibitions 
of a season. How did the sardonic painter of the French 
Revolution look upon the proposed Palingenesia *? Was it 
with inextinguishable laughter, or with a glance of burning fire, 
or with melancholy, unutterable scorn '? He knows the world 
is not a cloud-film. He knows that men are not wax figures 
whose cheeks can be painted by a delicate lady-like hand. He 
might tell us that the lion of the desert, with the madness of 
hunger in his eye, may be tamed by sweetened milk and water ; 
that the raging volcano, which has torn up the welded earth, 
and is hurling its flaming fragments at the sky, may be lulled 
by the song of the soft west wind or the waving of a lady's 
fan ; that the chafed surges of ocea. may pause and bow plac- 
idly their heads, when the maiden prays them in mild accents 



512 



PANTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 



to spare her lover ; but that man is to be charmed by no 
gentle music, that man is a creature of battle and of blood, 
that the Furies and the tempests but faintly image the savage- 
ness of his mood, and that all absurdities pall before that 
which regards him as reclaimed by honied words. There 
is but one thing in this universe that will overmaster the 
spirit of man : the sight of God laying hold of His thunder 
bolts ! 

The Positive Philosophy, the serried ranks, that consciously 
or unconsciously follow the dark guidance of Mammon and 
Atheism, are, we repeat, advancing. Say not Atheism can 
not, for a time, prevail. Even now the Fiend may be filling his 
chalice in the fire of hell, to pour it on our heads in some agony 
of national horror, like that of the French Revolution. Atheism 
has ere now led nations captive, and a theory of atheism so 
plausible, so temperate, so seemingly innocent and benign, was 
never advocated in the world before. Are we to oppose it by 
the like of Mr. Hunt's Religion of the Heart 1 Or even by 
sublime but sadly indefinite apostrophes to duty, and rever- 
ence, and hero-worship, and the divine silences ? If we might 
respectfully draw an inference from the tone of Mr. Carlyle's 
late works, we would be inclined to think that he is aware of 
some deficiency of force, and has a sad foreboding as to how the 
battle is to go ! 

A glance at past history and at the present state of the 
world reveals to us here two perils which we dare not over- 
look. The one is superstition, the other, licentiousness. 

It will not be in the power of atheism to extinguish the relig- 
ious instinct : but it may confine its manifestation to barbarous 
and debasing forms. If we drive away from us religion, when 
arrayed in the spotless robe of Christianity, if we will insist 
that we can devise for ourselves, with the aid of reason and 



PANTHEISTIC SPllvITUALISM. 513 

science, better rules of action and modes of life than are offered 
by that Gospel, which even its enemies allow to stand pre-em- 
inent among the institutions of men, we will find religion, by- 
unalterable necessity, reappearing among us, but now in a 
polluted garment, and bearing a curse rather than a blessuig. 
Is there no lesson for the age in our St. Simonisms and Mor- 
monisms'? Do they not prove the desperate and reckless 
yearning of the human heart after faith in God ? a yearning 
not to be appeased by the removal of all religious education, 
not to be satisfied by sensual joys, and which, if there is no 
true religion in which it can rest, will always call forth for it- 
self some humiliating and baneful form of superstition. 

The second peril, that of licentiousness, is no distant possi- 
bility, no slight and permissible evil : we suspect the time is 
drawing on when it will assail the very life of our nation. 
Against this, the Positive Philosophy would be utterly ineffi- 
cient. To restrain, indeed, any of the living and powerful 
forces in the human breast, it would be unavailing : Super- 
stition would break asunder its green withes, on the one hand, 
and Passion, on the other, would snap its flaxen cords as with 
the might of fire. And it is to us not a little mysterious how 
a spiritualism, so high-toned and lofty as to be removed above 
the common apprehension of men, and alleging all thought of 
reward or punishment immeasurably beneath the serene dig- 
nity of its virtue, can yet look with indulgence, or at least 
with tolerance, upon foul incontinence ! We think that if there 
is one form of iniquity beyond another which all pure-minded 
and patriotic men ought now to unite in opposing, it is this. 
It might be a question whether there is a sin possible to a writer, 
which no conceivable amount of genius is sufficient to induce us 
to pardon. If such there be, it is that committed in the works 
of Byron. We can bear with liim in all his petulance uud 
22 * 



514 PA.NTHEISTIC SPIRITUALISM. 

scorn, in his unhealthy egotism and half-conscious aftectation ; 
one star-glance of his Muse will cast a redeeming light over 
all that : but, if we see him draggling in the very mire the 
pinions of that very Muse, and heaping foul ashes on her head, 
how can we pardon him 1 We may have a certain sympathy 
with him, as we mark his regal port, though his aspect and 
fierce demeanor seem to speak defiance to God and man ; 
but we can not pardon him when we see him, a vile toad, 
squat at the ear of youth and purity, instilling foul poison. 
Vv^e may own a grandeur in Cain, and have a word to say 
even for the Vision of Judgment, but Don Juan must be flung 
upon the dunghill. We never can think of the state of the 
Roman Empire in its decline, without seeming to trace certain 
analogies between its state and that of Europe in the present 
day : one at least of the great causes which then enervated 
the race, and fitted it to be trodden in the dust by the strong 
men of the North, is now in operation over Europe. And if 
Atheism and Mammon once do their work, the judgments of 
God may again awaken to burn up a polluted and enfeebled 
people ! When the carcass of a nation lies dead, tainting the 
solar system, there will not want lightnings to kindle its 
funeral pyre ! 

Such are the dangers which threaten us, and such the power 
to oppose them. Have we yet another hope 1 



CHAPTER III 



GENERAL CONCLUSION. 



We have but a few words to add. We shall consider it 
made good in the foregoing pages, that Christianity still retains 
power to breathe a healing balm into social and individual life : 
and we shall now endeavor briefly to indicate in what precise 
position it stands, and how it is capable, as in every age, of 
drawing around it all the real enlightenment of the time, and 
going on ever to nobler manifestation and wider conquest. 

We have already had occasion to refer to the remark of 
Goethe, that " thought widens but lames ;" that it is a natural 
law and tendency that the intensity of belief be in an inverse 
ratio to its range. If we examine well the religious phenomena 
of the middle ages, we will find them characterized indeed by 
strength : but it was a strength that owed much to narrowness 
on the one hand, and superstition on the other. History has 
now, so to speak, lifted the roof from each nation and from 
each generation, showing the many families that dwell under 
the common blue, the many generations within one cycle of 
time ; astronomy has opened up the heavens around the arro- 
gating earth, and compelled it to dwindle from the central sun 
of the universe, with all the orbs circling round it, to a puny 
and planetary ball : the Reformation shattered the vast and icy 
crystallization of Popery, and since then the tongue of contro- 
versy has never been silent ; men must now have a far wider 



516 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 

range of ideas than in former ages. A proportionvate lessening 
of intensity is the necessary result. Is it, however, to be im- 
possible that the faith of a narrow intensity may be exchanged 
for that of an intelligent knowledge, which difference can no 
longer startle, and novelty no longer imperil ? that it attain a 
noble and manly composure, and a calmness of spiritual 
strength, which can distinguish between opinions and opinions, 
so as not to condemn good with bad, and between opinions and 
men, so as to tolerate and love the one, while opposing and 
exterminating the other *? To mourn over the old intensity is 
weak ; to recoil into skepticism and the universal unsoldering 
of belief, is a cowardly and feeble proceeding : to be religious 
without superstition, to be enlightened yet not infidel, is at 
present the part of a true man. It may at length be possible 
for Faith and Philosophy to form an alliance on such terms as 
these. 

Indecision and a spurious toleration are reigning temptations 
of the day. " As far," says Coleridge, " as opinions and not 
motives, principles and not men, are concerned, I neither am 
tolerant, nor wish to be regarded as such." " That which doth 
not withstand, hath itself no standing-place." And again, 
quoting from Leighton : — " Toleration is an herb of spontaneous 
growth in the soil of indifference ; but the weed has none of 
the virtues of the medicinal plant reared by humility in the 
garden of zeal." We can not too carefully remember that, if 
controversy is the sign of an imperfect development or distem- 
pered action of life, indifference, whether in philosophy or re- 
ligion, is death. If we might venture to trace the history of 
toleration in modern European progress, we should say that it 
had come through two stages, and might now be hoped to be 
entering on the third. First, there was the deep and universal 
sleep of Paganism ; the throne of toleration stood immovable 



GENERAL CONCLUSION. 617 

under the canopy of the ancient night. Then, for long ages, 
there continued the reign of intolerance; and, with all its 
gloom, we hail this new phenomenon as the indication of a 
mighty advancement made by the human mind, as a truth of 
the implantation in the heart and intellect of the race of the 
conviction that belief was important enough to be measured 
against the physical life: in this one consideration, we find 
power to turn into a beacon of promise every fire which per- 
secution has lighted since the commencement of the Christian 
era. A third and noblest epoch is still possible. It is that 
during which truth shall have absolutely and forever relin- 
quished the ministry of pain, and shall yet continue to be loved 
and followed with devotion equal to that of the olden time, 
when Earnestness and Intolerance, like two austere Spartan 
kings, exercised joint sovereignty. It is one great hope of our 
age that this era can now be inaugurated : and one great peril 
that, shaking itself free of the middle-age intolerance, it lapse 
into that indiflference to all spiritual things which Christianity 
at first dispelled. It is at present the peculiar and urgent duty 
of every brave man to witness to the unity, the definite clear- 
ness, the indestructible life, the perpetual value of truth : to 
manifest his unwavering conviction that, though a thousand 
arrows fly wide, the mark is stable and eternal ; that, though 
every voice of a discord, like that in the cave of tEoIus, proclaim 
that truth is with it, truth itself is immovable and immortal, 
and would be nowise differently effected, though all the lan- 
guages of men were blended to express it in one indivisible tone. 
And it is not to be disguised that the attitude of Christianity 
has in no age been that of compromise. It has been like a 
fiery sword, going up and down among the nations, searching, 
separating, and startling. It has never striven to show the 
similarity of error to truth, or to attempt a patchwork alliance 



518 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 

between them. Any such attempt must come to nought ; and 
it should be seriously laid to heart by all how deadly is the in- 
jury which may be inflicted by erring friendship, or a rash zeal 
that can not wait. There have been many arguments adduced 
to prove that Judas, in coming to the Pharisees to bargain for 
the betrayal of his Lord, might not actually intend His death ; 
that it is a possibility his motive was but to force on the man- 
ifestation of the kingdom of Jesus : and whether we are con- 
vinced by such arguments or no, they contain profound sug- 
gestion for as of these latter ages. Let us beware how we 
serve the Lord, even with a kiss ! 

It is not difficult, we think, to point to the precise tower of 
the strength of Christianity, to that position whose abandon- 
ment is the final yielding up of the victory. There is in the 
present day a vast deal of confounding babble about book rev- 
elations, historical evidence, and so on. We must look for 
some source of calming and ordering light to impart coherence 
and definiteness to our ideas of revelation, inspiration, and all 
kindred subjects. We find such a source, and we reach the 
ultimate fortress of Christian evidence, when we consider what, 
strictly speaking, the Christian Revelation is. It is the Revela- 
tion of a Person : it is the manifestation of Jesus Christ. All 
Revelation before His advent is the radiance that heralds the 
dawn : all Revelation after His advent is the shedding on the 
world of the risen Light. Let us once stand in His audience 
in Judea, once believe that He raises the dead, that He is from 
God, and all becomes clear. Out of His lips I hear the words, 
" The Scriptures can not be broken :" the words are clearly 
'distinguished; there is no variety of reading; history hears 
the words. What must I say on this 1 What He means by 
Scripture is an open question ; but that, if what He does in- 
tend can be broken, His word is broken with it, can not be 



GENERAL CONCLUSION. 519 

open to dispute. I listen further; I hear Him utter these 
words : " Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall 
in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Here again 
I ask history what He means by the law, but I must, in the 
meanwhile, grant that a stronger declaration of the supernatural 
character of a certain writing so named could not be framed. 
What now becomes of all the jargon about a book revelation ? 
Can I believe Jesus without believing His words 1 And I find 
that these are not exceptional words, but that in many forms 
and on many occasions He utters similar. I can not fail to 
perceive in Him a fixed habit of regarding a certain body of 
writings, as authoritative in matters of doctrine, and super- 
natural in respect of foresight. I note also that there accom- 
pany Him twelve men, that He sends them out to preach, 
miraculously endowed, that He . says to them expressly, " He 
that receiveth you receiveth me." I hear Him promise them 
the " Holy Ghost," in these words : " But the Comforter, which 
is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, 
He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your re- 
membrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." This, I must 
admit, seems an explicit promise of exemption from error in 
things connected with the teaching of the Gospel. Last of all, 
I watch Him in the midst of His disciples after His resurrec- 
tion, and once more hear these words — "Ye shall receive 
power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye 
shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all 
Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth." As I see Him received into the cloud, and vanishing 
toward heaven, can I doubt any longer that He has left trust- 
worthy apostles of His doctrines ? — can I turn away from the 
witnesses whom He has expressly commissioned 1 If I can 
repose absolute confidence in the declaration and promise of 



520 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 

the Saviour, my future inquiries are limited to the discovery 
of that " Scripture" which lie said could not be broken, and 
that testimony which His commissioned "witnesses" bore. 
Confirmatory evidence may arise from many quarters, but this 
is the center toward which all must converge. And let it be 
recollected that, in order to this result, we demand not any aid 
save that of history, of unaided human faculty, and (by hy- 
pothesis) uninspired human knowledge : we ascend the mount 
with our natural limbs, but we reach a station where we can 
see the hand of God tracing characters in celestial light. 

Christ and Christianity thus brings us to the Bible : we 
crave permission to quote certain sentences from Coleridge 
touching that Book : 

" In every generation, and wherever the light of Eevelation 
has shone, men of all ranks, conditions, and states of mind, 
have found in this volume a correspondent for every move- 
ment toward the Better felt in their own hearts. The needy 
soul has found supply, the feeble a help, the sorrowful a com- 
fort ; yea, be the recipiency the least that can consist with 
moral life, there is an answering grace ready to enter. The 
Bible has been found a spiritual world — spiritual, and yet at 
the same time outward and common to all. You in one place, 
I in another — all men somewhere, or at some time, meet with 
an assurance that the hopes and fears, the thoughts and yearn- 
ings, that proceed from, or tend to, a right spirit in us, are not 
dreams or fleeting singularities, no voices heard in sleep, or 
specters which the eye suflers, but not perceives. As if on 
some dark night a pilgrim, suddenly beholding a bright star 
moving before him, should stop in fear and perplexity. But 
lo ! traveler after traveler passes by him, and each, being ques- 
tioned whither he is going, makes answer, ' I am following yon 
guiding Star !' The p Igrim quickens his own steps, and presses 



GENERAL CONCLUSION. 621 

onward in confidence. More confident still will he be, if by the 
wayside he should find, here and there, ancient monuments, 
each with its votive lamp, and on each the name of some former 
pilgrim, and a record that there he had first seen or begun to 
follow the benignant Star ! 

" No otherwise is it with the varied contents of the sacred 
volume. The hungry have found food, the thirsty a living 
spring, the feeble a staff, and the victorious wayfarer songs of 
welcome and strains of music ; and as long as each man asks 
on account of his wants, and asks what he wants, no man will 
discover aught amiss or deficient in the vast and many-cham- 
bered storehouse. 

" For more than a thousand years the Bible, collectively 
taken, has gone hand in hand with civilization, science, law — 
in short, with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the spe- 
cies — always supporting, and often leading the way. Its very 
presence, as a believed Book, has rendered the nations emphat- 
ically a chosen race, and this, too, in exact proportion as it is 
more or less generally known and studied. Of those nations 
which in the highest degree enjoy its influences, it is not too 
much to affirm, that the diflTerences, public and private, physi- 
cal, moral, and intellectual, are only less than what might be 
expected from a diversity of species. Good and holy men, 
and the best and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of his- 
tory, enthroned in the hearts of mighty nations, have borne 
witness to its influences, have declared it to be beyond com- 
pare the most perfect instrument, the only adequate organ of 
Humanity." 

These beautiful sentences will not fail to recall to many the 
tones and touches of glowing eulogy of the Scriptures scattered 
over the works of Mr. Carlyle ; and it were no difficult task to 
give actual realizatiDn to the assertion in the concluding clause, 



522 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 

by appending an extended list of those mighty intellects -which 
in all ages have recognized an individual greatness and sub- 
limity in the strange Book. It is encompassed, all must con- 
ceive, with a mystery and ancient grandeur which set it alone 
among the phenomena of time, and will cause any sober and 
thoughtful man to approach it with a feeling akin to awe. 
Gradually beaming forth, in the infancy of the race, ere the 
dawn of history, and reaching meridian splendor over the 
manger of Bethlehem, it seems to possess a unity, measured 
by time, bridging the two eternities between which it lies, and 
over the whole stormy history of mankind casting a soft rain- 
bow splendor, a mild, heaven-lit radiance of infinite hope. Men 
and nations, at least as great as ever figured in the annals of 
the world, have not merely prized it but held that its light is, 
by nature, alone ; that it is diverse from aught that can be at- 
tributed to the action of those faculties belonging to man in 
his present stMe as a species ; that it could no more have been 
the production of a Shakespeare or a Newton, than of a child ; 
that it came even from Him who hung the stars and ranged 
the galaxies, in mercy to a world in spiritual night, lying 
under the mysterious eclipse of sin. The destinies of humanity 
are bound up with that Book ! 

The Word of God suggests His works. We have traced, 
in some measure, the general action and influence upon men 
of a physical science in league with atheism. But the proxim- 
ity of darkness can never defile light, the fact that knowledge 
has been made the minister of evil can never absolve us from 
the responsibility of making it the handmaid of good. Our 
God made the world : every discovery of its treasures, every 
revelation of its beauty, must be marked by Christians with a 
sacred interest. We offer one or two words on the present 
relations of Christianity and science. 



GENERAL CONCLUSIOlSr. 623 

It is a sublime and suggestive thought of Thomas de Quiu- 
cey's, that it was only at the Reformation that Christendom 
began rightly to decipher and understand the oracles of God. 
It is nowise inconceivable to us, that modern science may bear 
a commission to shed a light upon these oracles which will 
deserve the name of another Reformation. Even as it is, 
science has done much. It has widened vastly the conceptions 
of all enlightened men touching the power and the working of 
God. The astronomic scheme of the heavens, which satisfied 
the mind of Milton, and which he has lighted up with a radi- 
ance which will never fade in the temple of his immortal song, 
is now known assuredly to bear no more proportion to that 
limitless immensity where dwells the Almight}^, and where 
the unnumbered worlds He has willed into being float like a 
little cloud of light, than the orrery of a school-boy to the con- 
ception of the mighty poet. Almost strangely, too, and cer- 
tainly in accordance with no presage or expectation, physical 
science has, in our own day, thrown a light of spirituality over 
the page of inspiration, bringing out a radiance thereon hith- 
erto unseen, and touching with golden fire certain of the dog- 
mas of an iron theology. It has shown that death existed in 
the world ere the fall, thus turning perforce the attention of 
men to the nature of that death entailed upon man by sin, sug- 
gesting the question of the difference between the death which 
can pass upon an animal and that which can affect a spirit, and 
opening up vast fields of lofty and noble speculation regarding 
the complete and healthful nature of man, whether original or 
to be restored. Science has certainly opened the minds of 
men to perceive a deeper significance than hitherto recognized 
in the words of our Saviour which declare that what He said 
to His disciples was " spirit and life." And if it has enabled 
us more clearly to discern what was the past sentence and 



524 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 

what is the present curse, it casts also a fainter but still most 
precious ray into the far future of punishment and reward. 

We pursue not this subject further. Let us merely remark 
that apprehension on the part of Christians with reference to 
science is, in all respects, causeless, unreasonable, and absurd. 
To suppose that truth and God can be severed, is blasphemy. 
To refuse to accept the ascertained doctrines of science on be- 
half of revelation, is to cut away the foundation in order to 
save the house. The attitude of Christians toward science 
should be that of calm and earnest waiting. The Word of 
God stands on its own basis ; its foot on the rock foundations 
of the earth, its head reaching unto heaven. Science, too, 
stands on its own basis, stable as the faculties by which men 
grasp truth, and waxing in these times toward colossal dimen- 
sions. Even now it were surely an assertion far removed 
from extravagance, that it has done more for revelation than it 
has even seemed to do against it ; pointing back to an original 
revelation with really marvelous distinctness, and showing a cor- 
respondence between the Bible's theory of humanity and the 
truths of induction, which can hardly, by any man, be imputed 
to unassisted reason. But even supposing science to have as 
yet but disturbed that rest of ignorance which she can not yet 
recompose into the peace and strength, the repose and majesty, 
of perfect knowledge, can not Christians wait ? Truth must 
cast light upon truth ! Christianity is not to abandon her old 
position in the van of civilization, her old attitude of proud 
and challenging defiance to all adversaries ; she is not to lag 
ignominiously behind the race, entreating only not to be forced 
to a combat. Science is yet far from its meridian. It may 
take even centuries before its several subordinate lights blend 
their rays to cast a common illumination ; but is it too much 
to predict that, when science shall have filled its orb, it will 



GENERAL CONCLUSION. 625 

be seen by all nations, that the Father of spirits has had a 
higher design regarding it than that of spreading man's table 
or shortening his path, and that it casts a light, to reveal and 
demonstrate, over every pillar, down every avenue and colon- 
nade, into every nook and crevice, of His Word 1 " Wait on 
the Lord ; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine 
heart : wait, I say, on the Lord." 

" My faith," says De Quincey again, " my faith is, that, 
though a great man may, by a rare possibility, be an infidel, 
an intellect of the highest order must build upon Christianity." 
Surely it is a reasonable and manly faith. Christianity gives 
to man the immovable assurance of the Word of the eternal 
God for all those verities which are his glory and sublimity. 
While atheism, speaking great swelling words, would have 
him make his bed in the dust, and would spread over the uni- 
verse that wan and desolate look which the home of his infancy 
wears to the orphan that returns from his father's closing 
grave, it gives him the certainty of a spiritual existence, and a 
Creating Father. And it shows that Father manifesting His 
love in a manner whose very greatness wraps it in mystery : 
He is a God not far away, but brought nigh in Christ Jesus. 
While a vaguely aspiring and haughty spiritualism would cast 
over the future heavens a general indefinite illumination, or a 
sublime but fearful darkness, it pictures out the future of hu- 
manity, not, indeed, in detailed minuteness, but with such a 
defined and comprehensible clearness, that hallowed musing, 
aided by the sovereign imagination in its highest mood, may 
clearly distinguish certain of its great features, may breathe 
the unbroken serenity of the cloudless light, and gaze reverent 
on the fadeless crown. It can indicate, though faintly, 

" Those iiigh offices that suit 
The full-grown energies of heaven ;" 



626 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 

it can guarantee the eternity of friendship, and of that love 
which is the friendship of spirits. It opens up, also, the pros- 
pect of an inspiring futurity for earth ; it sheds an auroral 
splendor over even the terrestrial destiny of man. We allude 
not now to the millennial epoch, irreversible as the promise 
of such an epoch is. We refer to the power of Christianity 
to develop and ennoble the whole character of man ; and this 
grand peculiarity it has, that it makes this development and 
this ennoblmg sacred duties, that it tells a man that neither his 
faculties nor their sphere of operation are his, that he has to 
subdue the whole kingdom, and cultivate the whole garden of 
his soul for God, and must not rest, save in the peace that is 
the music of work, until the limits also of God's outer king- 
dom of the world inclose the whole earth. Where faith is 
firm, it must impart a steadfastness, an earnest composure, a 
dignity, to the whole man. A man must be affected by his 
sense of his position and responsibilities : he assuredly, what- 
ever his abilities, and whatever his sphere, who knows himself 
to be a soldier in God's army, will possess elements of strength 
and contentment that will distinguish him among men. Shall 
we not agree with these words of Edwards % — " Now, if such 
things are enthusiasm, and the fruits of a distempered brain, 
let my brain be evermore possessed of the happy distemper ! 
If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind 
may be all seized with this benign, meek, beneficent, beatifical, 
glorious distraction !" 

Christianity can at least, and surely with no need of argu- 
ment, affirm that it possesses a practical worth and power su- 
perior to that of any other system. The idea of world-history 
is not philosophy but faith. It is an old doctrine, which yet, 
like the forgetting of it, must ever be new, that to demonstrate 
and promulgate a truth is not to enforce it : to establish it in 



GENERAL CONCLUSION. 527 

the heart acd life of man, to set it by the plowman in the 
furrow, with the sailor on the ocean, with the artizan in the 
workshop, by the household fire, and in the brawling market- 
place, it must have some power of laying its hand on the in- 
stincts that lie deep and half-conscious in the bosom. The 
religious instinct is perhaps the deepest and most powerful of 
all ; no agency will produce a great impression, or effect a per- 
manent lodgment in the world, that admits not of being leagued 
with it ; and if it has now become a pre-eminent duty of the 
race to unite science and general education with religion, it 
may be argued, that if the race is really to bestir itself to ef- 
'fect its thorough education, education must come under the 
sanction and with the enforcement of religion. Neither must 
be left to stand alone. A people with the religious instinct 
strongly developed, yet all unenlightened by education, is like 
a giant smitten blind, that rushes wildly on, impelled by some 
resistless force, but toward no definite or noble goal : an en- 
lightened, an educated nation, without religion, is like a skele- 
ton bearing a lamp, it has light but not force. And if a 
superstitious nation, spreading its religion at the sword-point, 
or burning imaginary devotees of the prince of darkness, is a 
sad and dismal spectacle, it yet appears to us to have elements 
of real life and human strength with which we can sympathize; 
while we find something to excite an utter loathing, in the 
aspect of a nation, where there is no earnestness above that of 
the market-place, no temple more sacred than the studio, and 
life has become one immeasurable galvanic simper of theatri- 
cality and art. And let it once more be called to mind, that 
supervStition or licentiousness will never be long asleep. On 
the deck of the vessel they maybe dancing to soft artistic mu- 
sic, or rejoicing in the dainties of a scientific luxury, but mean- 
while the fire of superstition is smoldering in the hold, erewhile 



528 GENERAL COXCLUSION. 

to wrap it in flames, or the ship draws near some endless bank 
of fucus and sea-weed, into which when it once sails it makes 
no further progress, but rots away amid foul odors, on a sea 
where no wind ever blows. 



THE END, 



t^^ 



/o/^ 



-i 




'-.<^^ ^^^^LV^^ 












'iJv/-^ 



,0^' 













^'^- "^ -^ V = _-^^^^^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process, p 

■^'^' - " o " -j'^^^M Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

\ XT. '"_/"<^^M Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 ^ 

''^^r%' "^"' J"'^ V ^ ,%''«' ^ PreservationTechnologies 

.\^ ^ <3.^ *r "^ * WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

'K^ J^ • * f({\^ wX ''c u* \\ '' ^ '' Thomson Park Drive 

'^ ^ * ^\V1^'^ cP \^ Cranberry Township, PA 16066 

\V </> " ^^i^^r^i^ ''" t •-. (724) 779-2 in 

















II 




"--HESTEF 
INDIANA 












■S* '*. 







'■,■'■'■!■■ I'M 



\ >. 



h 



WM 






"ti 



-'''■Mm 










